Social Media Surveillance and Law Enforcement - Response
Social Media Surveillance and Law Enforcement
Area 1:
In a world in which large-scale and low-cost technologies have become commonplace, the capabilities of law enforcement in intelligence gathering have skyrocketed. Approximately 80 percent of local law enforcement agencies use social media platforms as intelligence gathering tools, and the successes found in using this process have only resulted in mounting pressure for law enforcement to preemptively identify potential criminals in this way. However, the use of social media in surveillance and law enforcement has raised several legal and ethical questions: What counts as public space? Should law enforcement monitor peaceful protests? Should the use of fake profiles to gather evidence be allowed? Will this predictive policing perpetuate the disproportionate scrutiny of minority groups by police?
Area 2:
As I went through this reading, I was fascinated by the idea of "situational awareness" mentioned in the text. In relation to the monitoring of social media feeds surrounding events in localized geographies, this gives law enforcement a great deal of power in incriminating those that are part of anti-establishment protests or events. This gets even messier when we consider this being possible outside of the U.S. in countries where law enforcement and the state itself are more intertwined. Much like many of the topics we have discussed in this class, this idea can be related to the current protests in Hong Kong. While social media has been a great tool for galvanizing protesters to action, social media has also been used by Chinese law enforcement to spread disinformation as well as identify and jail protesters.
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