Boston Police plans to monitor social media draw praise, criticism

[Valin]

American City & County:

Derek Prall

Dec. 5 2016

 

The Boston Police Department may soon enact controversial plan to utilize software that would scan social media for criminal activity and threats. While proponents of the plan say the software will make Boston a safer city, civil liberties groups say it would be an invasion of privacy.

 

The software will be able to search blogs, chat rooms, websites and social media platforms to provide law enforcement officials with a physical location of where a post originated, and send alerts when posts are made that fill certain criteria, according to the Boston Globe. The department plans to spend up to $1.4 million on the software and hopes to select a vendor early this month.

 

“The technology will be used in accordance to strict policies and procedures and within the parameters of state and federal laws,” police spokesman Lieutenant Detective Michael McCarthy said in a statement. “The information looked at is only what is already publicly available.”

 

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Watchdog groups are apprehensive about Boston’s plan, calling the monitoring “alarming” and accused the department of a lack of transparency in their software selection processes. The American Civil Liberties Union has recently criticized the police departments of two other cities for the use of similar software and tactics.

 

“The Boston Police Department did not go through any process to get feedback from the public,” Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, told The Boston Globe. The department did not ask “whether we want our tax dollars spent on something like this.”

 

Similar systems have been used in cities across the nation, including Chicago and Detroit, but Crockford fears the monitoring software will stifle free speech online. She calls the program a waste or resources and worries it would be used to target members of specific political groups.

 

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