Los Angeles Police Department found to have collected citizens' SNS accounts on job questions
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When the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) asked the general public who had not been accused of arrest or crime, they had to fill out documents about SNS accounts such as Twitter and Instagram, the major British general newspaper The Guardian reports.
Revealed: LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop | Los Angeles | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/08/revealed-los-angeles-police-officers-gathering-social-media
According to a copy of the documents that LAPD police officers fill out when asking the general public about their duties, police officers are instructed to record the general public's SNS accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter along with their background information. It became clear that. In addition, according to an internal memo, LAPD Chief of Police Michael Moore said, 'Data collection is important for use in investigations, arrests and prosecutions,' to make sure it was fully written in the record. It seems that he was instructing.
The Brennan Center for Justice , a non-profit organization that received a copy of the paperwork, expressed concern, pointing out that 'police may be conducting extensive surveillance for no good reason and threatening civil liberties.' Rachel Levineson-Waldman, Deputy Representative of the Brennan Center for Justice, said, 'It's really dangerous for police to have personally identifiable information on these social networks. The information gathered is probably for a wide range of purposes. It will be stored in the database used. '
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According to a memo by former police chief Charlie Beck, the entry field for SNS accounts was added to the job question documents in 2015. The memo said, 'Like nicknames and common names, the online personas and identities used by the person on SNS can be very useful for investigations ...'.
In October 2020, prosecutors accused three police officers of the LAPD's Security Headquarters Company of criminal accusations, accusing them of 'misidentifying ordinary people as members of the gang based on the documents of their job questions.' It is said that the company of the Security Department headquarters has an unnaturally high rate of stopping black drivers, and it is thought that the black and Latin residents who stopped are particularly required to fill out the job question card. 'The fact that departments that have been criticized for racism are collecting a large amount of public SNS accounts is a problem,' said Levinson-Woldman.
Privacy concerns are further heightened as police can also monitor individual online friends based on social media usernames. Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition , a group that threatens LAPD information gathering, also pointed out that police officers could create fake social media accounts and infiltrate the groups under investigation.
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In addition, there was also a column for entering the social security number in the job question documents. This social security number is an ID number assigned to each American citizen and is directly linked to personal information. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, police officers explained to the job question that 'under federal law, citizens must provide information, including social security numbers.' 'I didn't know there was a law that required individuals to disclose their Social Security numbers to local police,' said Kathleen Kim, a professor of law at Loyola University.
The Brennan Center for Justice pointed out that the reason for recording SNS accounts and social security numbers in job question documents is to monitor demonstrations of the 'Black Lives Matter' protest against black discrimination. The Brennan Center for Justice claims that LAPD was checking tweets and hashtags related to Black Lives Matter and leftist protests through the private-sector social networking company Geofeedia.
by Chris Yarzab
In addition, the Brennan Center for Justice reports that 'LAPD has budgeted $ 73,000 since 2021 to purchase software from Media Sonar, a company that tracks SNS, etc.' doing. Levinson-Waldman said, 'You would use Media Sonar's system to search for and understand drug, violence, and weapons slang. However, the slang used on social media may be misunderstood, or local groups or languages. I'm afraid I'm missing information about this. '
The LAPD responded to The Guardian's interview that 'the policy of the job question documents is being updated,' but details were not disclosed. The Guardian also contacted Media Sonar about his relationship with the LAPD, but he didn't get an answer.
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