In October 2016, the data analytics company Geofeedia made headlines when the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued the results of a major study which sought to determine the extent to which police services in California were using social media data analytics. These analytics were based upon geo-referenced information posted by ordinary individuals to social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Information of this kind is treated as “public” in the United States because it is freely contributed by users to a public forum. Nevertheless, the use of social media data analytics by police raises important civil liberties and privacy questions. In some cases, users may not be aware that their tweets or posts contain additional meta data including geolocation information. In all cases, the power of data analytics permits rapid cross-referencing of data from multiple sources, permitting the construction of profiles that go well beyond the information contributed in single posts.
The extent to which social media data analytics are used by police services is difficult to assess because there is often inadequate transparency both about the actual use of such services and the purposes for which they are used. Through a laborious process of filing freedom of information requests the ACLU sought to find out which police services were contracting for social media data analytics. The results of their study showed widespread use. What they found in the case of Geofeedia went further. Although Geofeedia was not the only data analytics company to mine social media data and to market its services to government authorities, its representatives had engaged in email exchanges with police about their services. In these emails, company employees used two recent sets of protests against police as examples of the usefulness of social media data analytics. These protests were those that followed the death in police custody of Freddie Gray, a young African-American man who had been arrested in Baltimore, and the shooting death by police of Michael Brown, an eighteen-year-old African-American man in Ferguson, Missouri. By explicitly offering services that could be used to monitor those who protested police violence against African Americans, the Geofeedia emails aggravated a climate of mistrust and division, and confirmed a belief held by many that authorities were using surveillance and profiling to target racialized communities.
In a new paper, just published in the online, open-access journal SCRIPTed, I use the story around the discovery of Geofeedia’s activities and the backlash that followed to frame a broader discussion of police use of social media data analytics. Although this paper began as an exploration of the privacy issues raised by the state’s use of social media data analytics, it shifted into a paper about transparency. Clearly, privacy issues – as well as other civil liberties questions – remain of fundamental importance. Yet, the reality is that without adequate transparency there simply is no easy way to determine whether police are relying on social media data analytics, on what scale and for what purposes. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to hold anyone to account. The ACLU’s work to document the problem in California was painstaking and time consuming, as was a similar effort by the Brennan Center for Justice, also discussed in this paper. And, while the Geofeedia case provided an important example of the real problems that underlie such practices, it only came to light because Geofeedia’s employees made certain representations by email instead of in person or over the phone. A company need only direct that email not be used for these kinds of communications for the content of these communications to disappear from public view.
My paper examines the use of social media data analytics by police services, and then considers a range of different transparency issues. I explore some of the challenges to transparency that may flow from the way in which social media data analytics are described or characterized by police services. I then consider transparency from several different perspectives. In the first place I look at transparency in terms of developing explicit policies regarding social media data analytics. These policies are not just for police, but also for social media platforms and the developers that use their data. I then consider transparency as a form of oversight. I look at the ways in which greater transparency can cast light on the activities of the providers and users of social media data and data analytics. Finally, I consider the need for greater transparency around the monitoring of compliance with policies (those governing police or developers) and the enforcement of these policies.
A full text of my paper is available here under a CC Licence.