After riots flared up throughout the U.K. this week, British Prime Minister David Cameron said his government was .

Ron Deibert, a political science professor with the University of Toronto who studies the use of technology in global affairs, said that type of mobile service disruption is unprecedented in the U.S. "I have not heard of this happening in the United States, although it happens frequently in zones of conflict and in authoritarian contexts - places like Belarus, Tunisia, Iran, Burma, Egypt, Libya, and Cambodia," he said via e-mail.

The IDG News Service