7 ms·

Police Use of Social Media Surveillance Software is Escalating

gerbilly 10y ago
>It goes without saying that speaking out against police violence or government overreach shouldn’t land you in a surveillance database. But it can, and it does. People need to realize is that social sites are voluntary surveillance platforms to begin with. In the best of cases they surveil you to learn what advertisements to show you, but of course once the infrastructure is built, it can be put to other uses. Social media gives the government and spy agencies undreamed of power. They don't have to create a file on each citizen, the citizen will create and update it for them!
- cryoshon 10y ago
  >Social media gives the government and spy agencies undreamed of power. They don't have to create a file on each citizen, the citizen will create and update it for them! Which is exactly why accessing this kind of public and innocuous info needs to require a warrant when the police do it. Unreasonable surveillance/stalking of an individual is not acceptable. We also need to clarify what "public" social media postings really mean. The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings, not the entire world, and not the police. Conflating a desire to communicate with friends with a desire to be surveilled is a mis-step that the police and state are happy to abuse.
  - pc86 10y ago
    > The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings, not the entire world, and not the police. You can make statements to the police that will cause you to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned - it does not matter one bit what your "intent" was. Social media posts are no different. If you make a public Facebook post admitting to a murder, the police should not need to get a warrant based on other evidence to get that post then arrest you.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    No, this is bonkers. It's like trying to defeat racial profiling by requiring policemen to wear horse-blinkers. Public is public; if you meant to send it to a limited audience, send it to that audience. Otherwise you end up with bizarre conclusions such as police twitter accounts requiring a court order to follow someone. A certain amount of what police properly do is "surveillance" - of a particular area or situation. What does become a problem is the use of directed police attention as harassment, for political purposes, or in a racial or otherwise discriminatory way.
  - mikestew 10y ago
    The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings That might be your intent, but whoo boy, do I have news for you: that's not the way it works, it's not how it was designed to work, and it's not how "they" tell you it works. Your "intent" has nothing to do with it. If you wish to keep your audience small, Facebook and Twitter aren't the way to do it. But long before "social media" showed up, we had means to keep things to a limited audience, things which do require a warrant to access.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Hell, Facebook has - and had for a long time - ways to limit the audience all the way you like. Many people do use it to great success (which I find sad, btw. - the great thing about social media in the past was that people were sharing a lot about themselves; now they seem to again isolate in very small circles of real-life friends). But you can't expect software to magically understand your intention, nor should you ever expect to control the information you share with another human being. When you share information, you also share control over it.
      - mikestew 10y ago
        Hell, Facebook has - and had for a long time - ways to limit the audience all the way you like. And my experience says they'll flip that off on a whim. It's been several years now, but one day FB decided that all formerly private photos would now be public. Not a bug, a design decision. I deleted my account the next day, so I can't say I've kept up on the latest in FB's privacy features. FB has obviously since gone back on that decision, but there's nothing stopping them from doing it again, or from introducing a bug.
        TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I've never seen that one and I've been using Facebook for quite some time. It sounds bad though :/. That said, the way I perceive Facebook over the last few years, is that they're constantly baiting people into increasing their privacy. They switch defaults towards "more private", and even for some time they had this annoying popup when you tried to post publicly that said something like "Did you know you're posting publicly? Click here to change it."
- panic 10y ago
  Sure, but what's the alternative? Social media is too involved in most people's lives for them to just leave. Maybe we should have legal restrictions on what data can be collected.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    The alternative is not using social media. Are you really saying it's impossible?
    - panic 10y ago
      Depending on your life circumstances, it can be very hard. What if you're part of a club that mainly communicates using Facebook? What if your friend group uses Facebook for events? Leaving Facebook makes it much harder to participate.
      - TunaRailgun 10y ago
        That's why it's best to load up on the false information, tag random people as you, and generally create noise. Lots of noise. Kind of like what gets generated for the keyword searches which are useless due to all the noise. Use those aliases.
EliRivers 10y ago
Overt threats: Unions. Them commies are everywhere.
- marcusgarvey 10y ago
  Except police unions. The cops think those are just fine.
  - hood_syntax 10y ago
    The hypocrisy is palpable...
Dowwie 10y ago
How are cash-strapped police departments funding social media surveillance?
- pjc50 10y ago
  They're choosing to make it a priority. Crime threatens the public, but activists "threaten" the police - by trying to make them accountable. > "identify so-called “threats to public safety” by monitoring hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #DontShoot, #ImUnarmed, #PoliceBrutality, and #ItsTimeforChange."
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    It's also easy to persuade people that riots could happen at any moment and could not only harm people and property, but reputation. If an area is seen as out of control, people will not go there to shop, businesses will not establish themselves there, and the city sees its tax base dry up. None of these things even have to happen to get people scared enough to vote yes.
  - cryoshon 10y ago
    Alternatively, fighting traditional crime does not actually require that much of their budget, so they try to open up new avenues of finding criminality in order to ensure they continue to get the same budget.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      Low on crime? Make more criminals.
- bediger4000 10y ago
  It's probably easier to monitor ordinary, lawful political conversations on social media, than it is to monitor people taking some steps toward confidential, conspiratorial conversations. Also, the social media stuff directly concerns the police image, and stature in society. Funding observations of criminals and miscreants is just their regular job. They don't get as much status for just doing their job as they might lose from institutionalized accountability.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
It goes without saying that this kind of survellience is not going to stop, possibly ever. Therefore, it is only fair that the tools and data collected by public servants is made equally accessible to the public. This provides a check on unprecedented power and the inevitable corruption that our current course is barreling towards.
- white-flame 10y ago
  At the very least, personal privacy rights be clarified and encoded into law. Even if disreputable surveillance continues, it should then be formally classified as corrupt if not straight-up illegal activity.
nxc18 10y ago
Activists broadcast messages publicly on social media; public servants read them. How is this controversial? If you want privacy, surely you should understand that sharing on the web isn't the way to go? In a lot of these cases where protests turn into violent riots a police response is necessary, if at a minimum to keep the peaceful protestors safe. Using publicly available information to facilitate that makes perfect sense.
- cryoshon 10y ago
  The concern is that the police are considering peaceful activism as hostile intent, and escalating scrutiny accordingly. Furthermore, more monitoring of activists provides more chances for incitement/provocation by the police as needed.
  - thatcat 10y ago
    >the police are considering peaceful activism as hostile Exactly. Police are willfully misinterpreting participation in a conversation intended to raise awareness about police misconduct in an attempt to intimidate activists into remaining silent. Using social media as a surveillance apparatus to manage their public image through intimidation is essentially cyber bullying.
    - ch4s3 10y ago
      > manage their public image through intimidation is essentially cyber bullying When an actor representing the state does this, I think it is appropriate to call it oppression. Sure, it isn't the Stazi, interrogate you in a small room for days kind, but it isn't exactly friendly or well meaning either.
      - arca_vorago 10y ago
        Tell the people who have disappeared into police run black sites like the one we know about in Chicago that, and I bet they would disagree. Interrogation for days without a lawyer sound awfully close to Stasi-esque to me. As Thomas Drake says, the Stasi would have killed for the surveillance engine regular lea's have at their disposal today.
cryoshon 10y ago
Why don't we have police/state targeted surveillance software? A million data points about police activity on social networks (on their personal accounts) would be a trove of enlightenment for the public. It's clear that they won't be transparent or share info about their personal or professional activities willingly... but we need the information regardless of their intransigence. Why should they be allowed to have privacy when they are so keen on abusing ours? I'm sure they feel the same way about us, but the honest truth is that going tit-for-tat against them re: surveillance works far better for the public as a whole.
- pc86 10y ago
  This is something I would donate quite a bit of time and money to.
- draugadrotten 10y ago
  > surveillance works far better for the public as a whole. A good read on the topic from Dr David Brin, http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
so, quit social media and murder police. YOU ARE ALL IDIOTS.
throw2016 10y ago
There is an worrying dissonance in democratic societies that treats protest like a paranoid regime would. The use of surveillance is highly questionable for citizens exercising basic rights. Military grade equipment and a heavy handed approach suggests a level of paranoia that does not seem at ease with basic democratic principles. Protests, large crowds and activism are essential aspects of a vibrant society, they also have potential for volatility and disruption. If you can't accept this and put law and order above all else to the extent that you need to monitor and confront citizens how far away are you really from a police state?

>It goes without saying that speaking out against police violence or government overreach shouldn’t land you in a surveillance database. But it can, and it does. People need to realize is that social sites are voluntary surveillance platforms to begin with. In the best of cases they surveil you to learn what advertisements to show you, but of course once the infrastructure is built, it can be put to other uses. Social media gives the government and spy agencies undreamed of power. They don't have to create a file on each citizen, the citizen will create and update it for them!

cryoshon 10y ago
>Social media gives the government and spy agencies undreamed of power. They don't have to create a file on each citizen, the citizen will create and update it for them! Which is exactly why accessing this kind of public and innocuous info needs to require a warrant when the police do it. Unreasonable surveillance/stalking of an individual is not acceptable. We also need to clarify what "public" social media postings really mean. The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings, not the entire world, and not the police. Conflating a desire to communicate with friends with a desire to be surveilled is a mis-step that the police and state are happy to abuse.
- pc86 10y ago
  > The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings, not the entire world, and not the police. You can make statements to the police that will cause you to be arrested, convicted, and imprisoned - it does not matter one bit what your "intent" was. Social media posts are no different. If you make a public Facebook post admitting to a murder, the police should not need to get a warrant based on other evidence to get that post then arrest you.
- pjc50 10y ago
  No, this is bonkers. It's like trying to defeat racial profiling by requiring policemen to wear horse-blinkers. Public is public; if you meant to send it to a limited audience, send it to that audience. Otherwise you end up with bizarre conclusions such as police twitter accounts requiring a court order to follow someone. A certain amount of what police properly do is "surveillance" - of a particular area or situation. What does become a problem is the use of directed police attention as harassment, for political purposes, or in a racial or otherwise discriminatory way.
- mikestew 10y ago
  The intent is for a limited audience of peers to recieve postings That might be your intent, but whoo boy, do I have news for you: that's not the way it works, it's not how it was designed to work, and it's not how "they" tell you it works. Your "intent" has nothing to do with it. If you wish to keep your audience small, Facebook and Twitter aren't the way to do it. But long before "social media" showed up, we had means to keep things to a limited audience, things which do require a warrant to access.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Hell, Facebook has - and had for a long time - ways to limit the audience all the way you like. Many people do use it to great success (which I find sad, btw. - the great thing about social media in the past was that people were sharing a lot about themselves; now they seem to again isolate in very small circles of real-life friends). But you can't expect software to magically understand your intention, nor should you ever expect to control the information you share with another human being. When you share information, you also share control over it.
    - mikestew 10y ago
      Hell, Facebook has - and had for a long time - ways to limit the audience all the way you like. And my experience says they'll flip that off on a whim. It's been several years now, but one day FB decided that all formerly private photos would now be public. Not a bug, a design decision. I deleted my account the next day, so I can't say I've kept up on the latest in FB's privacy features. FB has obviously since gone back on that decision, but there's nothing stopping them from doing it again, or from introducing a bug.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I've never seen that one and I've been using Facebook for quite some time. It sounds bad though :/. That said, the way I perceive Facebook over the last few years, is that they're constantly baiting people into increasing their privacy. They switch defaults towards "more private", and even for some time they had this annoying popup when you tried to post publicly that said something like "Did you know you're posting publicly? Click here to change it."
panic 10y ago
Sure, but what's the alternative? Social media is too involved in most people's lives for them to just leave. Maybe we should have legal restrictions on what data can be collected.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  The alternative is not using social media. Are you really saying it's impossible?
  - panic 10y ago
    Depending on your life circumstances, it can be very hard. What if you're part of a club that mainly communicates using Facebook? What if your friend group uses Facebook for events? Leaving Facebook makes it much harder to participate.
    - TunaRailgun 10y ago
      That's why it's best to load up on the false information, tag random people as you, and generally create noise. Lots of noise. Kind of like what gets generated for the keyword searches which are useless due to all the noise. Use those aliases.

EliRivers 10y ago

Overt threats: Unions. Them commies are everywhere.

marcusgarvey 10y ago
Except police unions. The cops think those are just fine.
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  The hypocrisy is palpable...

Dowwie 10y ago

How are cash-strapped police departments funding social media surveillance?

pjc50 10y ago
They're choosing to make it a priority. Crime threatens the public, but activists "threaten" the police - by trying to make them accountable. > "identify so-called “threats to public safety” by monitoring hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter, #DontShoot, #ImUnarmed, #PoliceBrutality, and #ItsTimeforChange."
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  It's also easy to persuade people that riots could happen at any moment and could not only harm people and property, but reputation. If an area is seen as out of control, people will not go there to shop, businesses will not establish themselves there, and the city sees its tax base dry up. None of these things even have to happen to get people scared enough to vote yes.
- cryoshon 10y ago
  Alternatively, fighting traditional crime does not actually require that much of their budget, so they try to open up new avenues of finding criminality in order to ensure they continue to get the same budget.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Low on crime? Make more criminals.
bediger4000 10y ago
It's probably easier to monitor ordinary, lawful political conversations on social media, than it is to monitor people taking some steps toward confidential, conspiratorial conversations. Also, the social media stuff directly concerns the police image, and stature in society. Funding observations of criminals and miscreants is just their regular job. They don't get as much status for just doing their job as they might lose from institutionalized accountability.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

It goes without saying that this kind of survellience is not going to stop, possibly ever. Therefore, it is only fair that the tools and data collected by public servants is made equally accessible to the public. This provides a check on unprecedented power and the inevitable corruption that our current course is barreling towards.

white-flame 10y ago
At the very least, personal privacy rights be clarified and encoded into law. Even if disreputable surveillance continues, it should then be formally classified as corrupt if not straight-up illegal activity.

nxc18 10y ago

Activists broadcast messages publicly on social media; public servants read them. How is this controversial? If you want privacy, surely you should understand that sharing on the web isn't the way to go? In a lot of these cases where protests turn into violent riots a police response is necessary, if at a minimum to keep the peaceful protestors safe. Using publicly available information to facilitate that makes perfect sense.

cryoshon 10y ago
The concern is that the police are considering peaceful activism as hostile intent, and escalating scrutiny accordingly. Furthermore, more monitoring of activists provides more chances for incitement/provocation by the police as needed.
- thatcat 10y ago
  >the police are considering peaceful activism as hostile Exactly. Police are willfully misinterpreting participation in a conversation intended to raise awareness about police misconduct in an attempt to intimidate activists into remaining silent. Using social media as a surveillance apparatus to manage their public image through intimidation is essentially cyber bullying.
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    > manage their public image through intimidation is essentially cyber bullying When an actor representing the state does this, I think it is appropriate to call it oppression. Sure, it isn't the Stazi, interrogate you in a small room for days kind, but it isn't exactly friendly or well meaning either.
    - arca_vorago 10y ago
      Tell the people who have disappeared into police run black sites like the one we know about in Chicago that, and I bet they would disagree. Interrogation for days without a lawyer sound awfully close to Stasi-esque to me. As Thomas Drake says, the Stasi would have killed for the surveillance engine regular lea's have at their disposal today.

cryoshon 10y ago

Why don't we have police/state targeted surveillance software? A million data points about police activity on social networks (on their personal accounts) would be a trove of enlightenment for the public. It's clear that they won't be transparent or share info about their personal or professional activities willingly... but we need the information regardless of their intransigence. Why should they be allowed to have privacy when they are so keen on abusing ours? I'm sure they feel the same way about us, but the honest truth is that going tit-for-tat against them re: surveillance works far better for the public as a whole.

pc86 10y ago
This is something I would donate quite a bit of time and money to.
draugadrotten 10y ago
> surveillance works far better for the public as a whole. A good read on the topic from Dr David Brin, http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

so, quit social media and murder police. YOU ARE ALL IDIOTS.

throw2016 10y ago

There is an worrying dissonance in democratic societies that treats protest like a paranoid regime would. The use of surveillance is highly questionable for citizens exercising basic rights. Military grade equipment and a heavy handed approach suggests a level of paranoia that does not seem at ease with basic democratic principles. Protests, large crowds and activism are essential aspects of a vibrant society, they also have potential for volatility and disruption. If you can't accept this and put law and order above all else to the extent that you need to monitor and confront citizens how far away are you really from a police state?