Social Media Surveillance of U.S. Persons by the Police and Military



According to a February 2018 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts "the Boston Police Department (BPD) used a social media surveillance system to conduct online surveillance over three years, explicitly targeting users’ First Amendment protected speech and association... the BPD - using a social media surveillance system called Geofeedia - collected thousands of social media posts about political and social activism, current events, religious issues, and personal matters from January 2014 through May 2016." The documents provide no indication that the social media surveillance conducted using Geofeedia’s automated monitoring service was ever instrumental in preempting terrorism or other violence.

But social media monitoring by law enforcement is nothing new. We can travel from Boston to Seattle and see How the Seattle Police Secretly -and Illegally- Purchased a Tool for Tracking Your Social Media Posts. According to an article in 'The Stranger' "the Seattle Police Department headquarters on Third Avenue acquired the ability to watch your social media posts in real time, using software that can place those posts on a digital map. This tracking software, which the SPD purchased in October 2014 from a CIA-funded company called Geofeedia, is designed to tell officers where you posted from and what you said. It can also show hundreds of other tweets, Instagrams, and other social media posts from anyone else in the vicinity, and then file all of that information into one big database."

It’s not just law enforcement agencies that are tracking your social media posts. In March 2017, Indy Bay News reported The CIA May Be Able to Hack You... but JBLM is Monitoring Everything You Do. According to the article “In the summer 2016 we found that the Joint Base Lewis-McChord Force Protection Division was gathering information from the social media accounts of Black Lives Matters participants, and later that year, and into 2017, collecting information about people who supported Seattle Council member Sawant’s initiatives for a better Seattle.” And... “according to a November 2015 article in Bloomberg, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service used special software to spy on every computer in Washington state, regardless of whether those computers were owned by a member of the armed forces, or not.”

Military Intelligence personnel, and other government employees performing intelligence activities, must comply with Intelligence Oversight regulations.  One activity that is considered “questionable” and should be reported is “Collecting information on U.S. persons, even through open source, when it is not part of the unit's mission.”

In the vast majority of cases it will NOT be part of a unit's mission to collect open source information about U.S. Persons. It is virtually certain that the G-2 (G-2 refers to the military intelligence staff of a unit in the United States Army) at your locally military installation, the installation's anti-terrorism / force protection office, and personnel in the local security office have no mission or lawful authority to collect open source information about U.S. Persons.

The Department of Defense (DOD) recognizes that the privacy of an individual is directly affected by the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personal information by Federal agencies; and that the increasing use of computers and sophisticated information technology, while essential to the efficient operations of the Government, has greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy that can occur from any collection, maintenance, use, or dissemination of personal information. (DCMA Privacy & Civil Liberties Office).

DOD policy prohibits collecting, reporting, processing, or storing information on individuals or organizations not affiliated with the Department of Defense, except in those limited circumstances where such information is essential to the accomplishment of the DOD mission.

DOD will not maintain information on how an individual exercises rights protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, including the freedoms of speech, assembly, press, and religion...

No information shall be acquired about a person or organization solely because of lawful advocacy of measures in opposition to Government policy. (DoDD 5200.27)

Simply put, if an employee of the DOD is collecting information about you, without your knowledge or consent, and you are a U.S. Person, it is almost certain that that collection is in violation of DOD regulations and Federal law.

But this prohibition on collection of information doesn't just apply to the DOD. Other Federal agencies have similar policies prohibiting the unwarranted collection of information about American citizens.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance lists as prohibited conduct:

• Investigating and collecting, maintaining, using, or sharing information regarding persons or groups solely because they are involved in constitutionally protected activity.
• Collecting, maintaining, using, or sharing information without evaluating its reliability and validity (i.e. copied and reported as found without evaluation and analysis). 
• Collecting, maintaining, using, or sharing information (such as names) in political petitions, mailing lists, organizational memberships, or writings espousing a particular view that is protected by the First Amendment.

Now you may ask, what's the problem with the police, or even the military, looking at open source (public) information, even if that information is about U.S. Persons? It's not like they have secret files about you hidden away on some government computer network, or are collecting this information and posting it to intelligence databases. Oh, wait... Yes they do, and yes they are! And... as we have seen your privacy "is directly affected by the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personal information by Federal agencies."

The Berkeley Technology Law Journal and the Internet Policy Review Journal has concluded that government online surveillance has a chilling effect on 1st Amendment rights of free expression. "With internet regulation and censorship on the rise, states increasingly engaging in online surveillance, and state cyber-policing capabilities rapidly evolving globally, concerns about regulatory "chilling effects" online - the idea that laws, regulations, or state surveillance can deter people from exercising their freedoms or engaging in legal activities on the internet have taken on greater urgency and public importance."

 

What Can You Do To Protect Yourself?

Unfortunately, this is a very difficult question to answer? You may, of course, choose not to use social media, or to keep your posts restricted and viewable by only your close circle of friends and family. But, with either of these choices we see the "chilling effects" of government surveillance as you limit your public expression for fear of ending up in police or intelligence databases, or being tracked in some secret government file.

Now, the government can't easily track what it can't see, so there may be advantages to using on-line sites and services that protect your privacy. Regardless of your view on government social media surveillance, it is important that you always take precautions to safeguard your on-line communications and protect your personal privacy. Many such techniques are discussed here in my blog, Chesbro-on-Security, but my commentary on the topic is by no means exhaustive or necessarily the best for your particular circumstances.

Most importantly, if you find that some government employee, office, or agency is engaging in questionable surveillance, collection, and dissemination of information - Report It! Contact the agency head where the violations are occurring and request that they investigate and stop the questionable activity. Report it to the Office of the Inspector General (IG) for the agency involved in the questionable activity. Ask that the IG investigate and take appropriate corrective action. If you find that the agency is unresponsive, consider seeking legal assistance from organizations such as the ACLU and the EFF. As with the articles above, you may disclose government misconduct to the press and see if news agencies will investigate and report on the questionable activity. While you may fear retaliation from government agencies for reporting their misconduct, remember that you have some security provided by the Whistleblower Protection Act, or you may choose to submit your information to major news agencies anonymously using programs like Secure Drop.