When Cops Check Facebook
But like most teens, Jelani was keenly aware of his social position. “People are looking to see how you respond,” Jelani told a reporter. He explained that if someone from your crew posts a video of a fight to Facebook or YouTube, it isexpected that you click the “like” button next to it. If not, he said, “people are gonna ask you why.”
.. The fundamental problem with policing via social-media data is that it misrepresents what social networks actually look like on the ground. Despite what techno-evangelists might wish, not all social relationships can be described using computational logic. The problem is structural and epistemological. Like all computer programs, databases are ultimately based on binary logic. If you want shades of meaning, you have to explicitly build that capability into your system.
.. A district attorney or cop looking for a suspect could automatically assume that the kid who’s listed in the gang database is more likely to be involved than the kid who isn’t. This specific bias is embedded in IBM’s CopLink, a software package in use at police departments across the country since 1996. “The premise behind CopLink is that most crime is committed by persons who are already in police records,” writes Meghan S. Strohine in Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings.Simply creating an entry in a database labeled “criminals” tinkers with the presumption of innocence.