The Daily News announced earlier this week that a new unit in the New York Police Department will be dedicated to scanning social media networks like Twitter and Facebook for evidence of future or past criminal activities.
It was stated that the special unit will operate under the Community Affairs Bureau. An update from the NYPD explains that the Daily News was inaccurate and though they will heighten the role of social media in law enforcement tactics, no official unit has been formed.
Regardless, the NYPD does admit that utilizing social media to catch criminals has grown. More recently Facebook cracked down on inmates and prisoners and their usage of the social network. Facebook with the cooperation of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation erased updated pages from prison inmates.
- Prisoners are permitted to have Facebook accounts but are not permitted to update them during their incarceration due to the risk of continued criminal activity from behind bars.
- "Access to social media allows inmates to circumvent our monitoring process and continue to engage in criminal activity," said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate in a statement. "This new cooperation between law enforcement and Facebook will help protect the community and potentially avoid future victims."
Social media is after all a place for organization and community, and it doesn't restrict people from organizing to participate in crime. Consider the current situation in the UK with the London riots and Prime Minister David Cameron's recent plight to ban social media until trouble subsides.
Many lawyers have used social media, hiring investigators who have a whole new method of finding dirt via networks where people openly divulge incriminating information.
Users of social media are constantly forgetting how public and permanent sharing information can be. This gives law enforcement an easy target for tips on planned and ongoing criminal offenses.
In many instances, social networks tell a story of how crimes progressed, basically wrapping evidence in a neat little package equipped with recorded time, date, and identification.
- In March a Brooklyn woman, Kamisha Richards, was arrested for stabbing her friend to death. A Facebook feud explained that it all started over a $20 loan for diapers.
Think you have the highest level of privacy set to your social networks? Don't forget that what goes on the Internet -- stays on the Internet, and one warrant can forgo your privacy rights and implicate you in ways you never even considered.
Do you think that growing privacy issues in social media and the Internet is ringing too close to Big Brother? Would you ever sacrifice your social presence because of these factors?