On Wednesday , the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusettsreleased a damnatory reportdetailing blanket social media surveillance in Boston between 2014 and 2016.Thousands of documentsobtained through public record asking bring out that constabulary used forward-looking societal media data excavation technique to monitor what they term “ Islamist Extremist Terminology . ” The authority exercise with Geofeedia , a social media monitoring startup that both Facebook and Twitterbanned from using their data in December 2016 , propel the ACLU ’s original records request .
Using Geofeedia , police are able to trickle social media posts base on images , keywords , hashtags , and , crucially , location data — all in existent time . The Boston Police Department and its intelligence activity assemblage arm , the Boston Regional Intelligence Center , source posts from Facebook , Instagram , YouTube , Flickr and Twitter . In Chicago , police tracked multitude using the # BlackLivesMatter hashtag during dissent , Similarly , Boston authorities tracked hoi polloi squeeze # MuslimLivesMatter online . This surveillance dragnet caught up everyone using the place tag , let in emoji , in the area , even if they opted not to disclose their localization to Twitter itself .
As document show , the Boston Regional Intelligence Center make an alert class called “ Islamist Extremist Terminology ” and place up alerts around terror - related keywords , like “ ISIS ” and “ Muslim country , ” and lyric that may be connected to an attack , include “ smoke,”“boom , ” and “ back pack . ” BRIC appendage received an email with a link to any tweet , Facebook post , YouTube clip or other mailing take the keywords add up from a selected clip and localisation . Other snappy categories let in “ Chapel Hill Shooting , ” a extension to the 2015 murder of three Muslim Americans . The BPD searched for hoi polloi using the # MuslimLivesMatter hashtag after their decease .
But emails let on BRIC used Geofeedia for much more expansive surveillance than simply location - establish alert . Not only could BRIC see tweets in real time in a specific location , they could spotlight an area and reckon file away tweets going back “ weeks or even months . ”
Tellingly , a 2014 electronic mail mention a Target Tracker subject of “ a connection psychoanalysis to show who the prey is affiliated with on all Social Media . ” This seemingly refers toassociational data . When using societal media to keep tab key on someone , police force often make government note of who they ’re friend with online and who ’s track in their photos . Privacy advocates have long balked at the idea of targeting multitude for surveillance because of who they ’re champion with . Of course , masses ’s friend roach tend to admit others of the same race , income , and Department of Education horizontal surface , making associational data a character of profiling .
Finally , Boston police wanted the power to search tweets in case of a crisis . To that end , BRIC fix up alerts to trigger automatically in area succeed attack . Most interestingly , Boston Police wanted integration with ShotSpotters . ShotSpotters are acoustic machine with GPS capability . Whenever they detect gunshots , they indicate to law where shot were heard . The BPD was looking into integrating GeoFeedia and ShotSpotters , so that if gunfire were get a line in a neighborhood , police would immediately invite societal media update from people in the environ area . BRIC ’s director , David Carabin , also want 911 integration , so a call for emergency brake services would trigger a social medium sweep as well .
The three - year trial for Geofeedia cost Boston $ 26,698 , but the ACLU found no grounds that the social culture medium mining conduct to any catch or prompted further investigations . Facebook , which owns Instagram , and Twitter have promised to cut off Geofeedia ’s accession , but it ’s important to recall that all public information is still fair game for constabulary .
[ ACLU MassachusettsandPrivacy SOS ]
AI / EthicsSocial sensitive
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