An Oregon Department of Justice employee was monitoring Black
Lives Matter supporter’s online activity. Apparently the state attorney general
ordered it to stop. What is very interesting to me is why this Justice
Department employee thought it was legal to monitor this activity in the first
place. It's scary to know that the government can lawfully spy on a lawful
advocacy group on. The interview reported, "it's also illegal for state law enforcement to
collect information about people's religious, social, and political
views." Yet, it was still done in this case. Who is responsible for
protecting our Internet and social media privacy? Is it only up to the user?
Check out the interview below:
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/13/455862583/oregon-orders-a-stop-to-surveillance-of-black-lives-matter-supporters
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ReplyDeleteHi Chelsey, I think this relates back to the article I posted earlier about how surveillance is carried out. It's about phone data instead, but the principles should be similar: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/06/the_nsa_s_phone_call_database_a_defense_of_mass_surveillance.single.html
ReplyDeleteGiven relevant occurrences such as the localized outbreaks of violence surrounding the acquittal of Darren Wilson, it sounds like this particular employee felt that there could be similar dangerous elements in their midst. So, like the mass data collection in the Slate.com article, the employee took to scanning for as many individuals as possible that could be connected with this, using the BlackLivesMatter hashtag.
From the wording in this article it sounds less like the person was collecting information on the social/political views themselves as an end goal, and more like identifying and creating a data sample via these publicly tweeted/posted hashtags. for the purpose of generating a pool of information from which possibly threatening (such as mentioning premeditated violence, for example) individuals can be identified