On Social Media, Cops Play Catch-Up
A report issued by the International Association of Chiefs of Police on Social Media concludes that Law Enforcement Agencies should “get their feet wet” and learn how to use social media to help protect citizens and prevent crime. The take-away from the report: Police are still a long way from being able to effectively track and prevent threats on social media.
The biggest challenge facing many police departments is that social media has only ever been used to do two things:
- disseminate information to the public;
- and serve as an investigative tool for a crime that has already been committed.
Truth be told, very few departments have the know-how, the training, the budget, or the technological support to use social media proactively.
Other than the NYPD, where the city of New York is able to dedicate resources to support their own Intelligence Division, very few departments below the state and federal level are able to invest in any meaningful protective intelligence capability. In fact, most training academies provide little to no training at all to their officers on the use of social media. Those who do, offer only a small measured curriculum focused on its use to disseminate information to the public, coupled with the agency’s own policy regarding work-related posts by employees; i.e. “you work for us, but you do not speak for us.”
A preventative approach is easier said than done. The number of social network users around the world will rise from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year, an 18% increase. By 2017, the global social network audience will total 2.55 billion. Without government assistance, this avalanche of available data is the equivalent of trying to hold a canteen under a waterfall. The process would be easier to manage if each individual department was capable of carrying their own weight, but as the report shows, this is far from being a reality.
In today’s technological age, social media accounts for 22% of time spent online. Even among those internet users ages 50 and older, social networking has nearly doubled — from 22% to 42% over the past year. This means that today’s police departments must be social media savvy to stay relevant. Police departments at every level of governance must not only understand what is going on in the areas they are responsible for keeping safe, but must also stay vigilant in attempting to identify those who express a desire to do harm. There’s is simply no excuse in today’s policing environment for a journalist like Amanda Hess, who after beingdirectly targeted by an online threat, is asked “What’s Twitter?” by the responding officer.
The courts haven’t been much help either. Without judicial precedent, many departments are hesitant to be made an example in the failures of due process. As anyone who has ever seen a season of “The Wire” will tell you, the courts have always been behind the curve when it comes to keeping current with new technology. While it is still unclear if law enforcement violates Fourth Amendment rights by obtaining information through fictitious social media accounts, the courts have set a precedent that simply classifying something as “private” through social media settings does not extend to those with whom you share. In a 2012 case, the court ruled that a third party acting as an informant, who was able to obtain the information through “legitimate online means” did not violate any laws.
[The suspect’s] legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his ‘friends’ because those ‘friends’ were free to use the information however they wanted — including sharing it with the Government,” the court said. U.S. v. Joshua Meregildo
Even in a city like New York, detectives are barred from delving too far into the realm of a social media investigation without being dully sanctioned to do so. In New York, the Handschu Agreement requires that any investigation by the NYPD involving political activity — which includes social networks — must be initiated and supervised by the Intelligence Division.
When used effectively, social media can provide more information in a few key strokes than a week’s worth of in-person interviews. There is a wealth of information available on social media to a detective looking to bring a suspect to justice. Everything from self-incriminating photos, to bragging about a crime online have helped countless cases get solved.
There is also an abundance of open-source information readily available to assess, categorize, and cross-reference that can help to prevent crime, but that’s not what many policing agencies were designed to do. Even with game-changing private-sector software readily available, most departments are simply under trained, under financed, and ill-equipped for them to be properly employed.
In the end, keeping the public safe is a marathon, not a sprint. Social Media is simply the next step is civil evolution that both the police and the courts will have to sort out in the best interest of public safety. We must keep in mind that the role police is to be mostly reactive. The local officer is responsible for patrolling the streets with a certain resemblance of deterrence, but mostly to respond to a reported crime, investigate what happened, and then bring the perpetrators to justice.
Can this task be re-focused? Yes, of course…
…but it’s going to take some time.
