Well it occurs to me that part of this might be plausible deniability. The thief in question being able to say "well, I didn't put that up because I'm not stupid. Someone hacked my account and photoshopped the picture". The inherant "truth of the camera" doesn't exist anymore and it can be very difficult to prove cases like this without other evidence, not to mention lots of very expensive work (at goverment expense) to maybe disprove digital manipulation.
I'm just saying, sometimes stupid, can actually be not so stupid. There might actually be some thought behind this, from a fairly tech savvy generation, that also understands the legal issues a little better than we might think. Facebook is notoriously unreliable for plenty of reasons, and many Juries are going to be unwilling to convict someone based entirely on what appears on someone's page. Things might be a bit differant in the UK than here in the US, but I don't think the laws involved are liable to be that differant. I could be wrong though.
That said, I find it kind of disturbing that not much is being said about the motivation for these riots, with mixed reports over whether it started with the shooting of some gangsta wannabee who pulled a gun on the police (though just as many sources say there is no connection, and people are only guessing that wildly based on an incident that sparked riots back in the 1980s). Either we have a super villain out there (Marvel's "Hate Monger" returns!) or it smacks of something of a goverment cover up.
That said, I'm going to be a twit by restating my opinion on the subject of riots in general. I think massive civil disturbances of this sort are increasingly becoming huge deals because of a complete lack of fear on the part of those doing the rioters. All the focus on "humane" ways of dealing with them means there is little fear of the potential repercussions.
During the riots in France, New Orleans, here, and other places, I think the non-lethal methods need to be shelved and the police and national guard need to go in with actual bullets. In most places the Continuum Of Force makes opposing numbers a major contributing factor to escalating what you can use to begin with, but it seems like riots
are treated as some major exception. If your dealing with a civil war, nothing easy is going to help, but with these kinds of localized problems the police simply taking a "Looters will be shot on sight" policy will probably make a bigger differance than all the threats and tear gas in the world. I also think it would help to keep things like the Chav population (given all the complaints I hear) in line due to simple attrition if nothing else. If all the jerks and oppertunists come running out to loot and post it on Facebook (which I believe is genuine, I just think there are difficulties proving that in a court of law) and wind up getting blown away in the process of trying to steal body butter or whatever other garbage they are after, I think we'll wind up with a lot less jerks and oppertunists.
I know a lot of people will disagree with the above paragraph, but honestly with every riot in my memory I've sat there thinking "WTF" while the police pretty much let it go on, and work more to "contain the situation" than to actually stop it. I suspect it's because the policies make the police afraid of the repercussions of "brutalizing the poor, unarmed civilians" even when they are blowing up cars in the streets.
