Use of Social Media Being Used by Law Enforcement

Social Media in Law Enforcement

As with anything that involves privacy and the supposed or alleged invasion thereof, the use of social media as a means to enforce laws and/or capture suspects often incurs the same wrath and scrutiny as any other supposed encroachment on privacy. Much the same thing is said of surveillance cameras in public or widely traversed private areas or personal property (Nichols, 2013). While use of social media as a means to monitor and track people's statements and actions can go too far, the capture and use of social media data that is readily and legally available is not unethical or improper to use and harness when speaking of viable and legitimate police actions.

Pros & Cons

The cons to using social media as a means to enforce laws and capture suspects are few but they are definitely present. As intimated in the subject, the use of surveillance cameras, just as one example, in areas that are public or heavily frequented by the public like public streets, shopping malls and so forth is often heavily criticized as "Big Brother" or otherwise a form of privacy invasion. Of course, the legal concept of "reasonable expectation of privacy" would be in force and thus would rule the day but this logical and reasonable provision of the law does not stop a lot of the public from complaining about the process and method nonetheless (SSD, 2013). With that in mind, Facebook and similar websites have privacy controls that can be hard if not difficult to legally circumvent. While this makes sense from a personal control and privacy standpoint, it can be vexing for law enforcement to have the information online but not accessible. However, there is a happy medium at times where a law enforcement member can friend someone who is friends with the suspect(s) of friends of the same. However, this can be difficult as many people will not friend people they do not know and posing as someone can be legally perilous and/or procedurally difficult.

Another con to using social media for law enforcement is that social media is not a panacea when it comes to capturing people. Social media, like many other online devices and such, can be used in a fake or manufactured manner that can include saying things that are not true, tagging themselves where someone is not actually present and so forth. This could even be done by an astute criminal that knows the cops are tracking them and use social media tips and tricks against the cops by representing that they are somewhere that they are not. Also, people that use social media, if they are smart and informed, can greatly control and manipulate what people see and do not see. Some people can even be blocked form seeing anything at all up to and including their name. Facebook, as one example, as limited that power somewhat but it's still very advanced in many to most areas.

As for the pros, they are major and important. Many people are ambivalent to ignorant about the robust privacy settings that exist on Facebook and similar sites. Sites like Twitter are basically completely public with little to no ability to shield questionable material or activity short of deleting the activity after the fact. This will not stop some people from playing the victim card if/when the material they post gets them caught but so long as it is due to user ignorance rather than anything illegal on the part of the law enforcement personnel, then the material should easily be usable in court. Another pro-to using social media to track or capture someone is that the updates from social media are often immediate because linking Facebook or Twitter activity to a cell phone or other tracking point like a computer is quite easy and the computer or phone can then do the rest of the work for you, for the most part.

On a similar note, Facebook and other activity often automatically links a person to the location that they are at, even when it's not on purpose. At a minimum, it can tell a law enforcement agent the city in which the person is located. However, if the user self-tags their location, it can be as specific as an actual building or complex such as a retail store, a zoo or at least the mall. Lastly, despite the robust security options and other tools, the Internet can be very good at capturing behavior and information even with the best efforts of a use to delete or suppress the information later on. If a website external to a social media site captures a social media post, it can be exceedingly difficult to delete all traces of that post even if a user wants to do so. However, even as something as basic and easy as a screen capture or some other monitoring software can be used to capture something that is posted and then edited or deleted.