The use of social media by law enforcement is one of the most debated issues, especially with regard to recent events in the news.  Recently, COP partners from the Brennan Center for Justice and the Center on Critical Intelligence Studies (one of the three centers under the Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities) have been part of discussions of to what extent social media can be used to aid law enforcement in preventing and solving crimes.  Often when law enforcement officials look to the social media of suspects who have carried out violent acts like the recent school shooting in Parkland, FL, there are posts that may have been able to alert authorities that Nikolas Cruz was planning a violent attack.

However, the use of social media as a surveillance tool is controversial.  While there would be benefits to allowing access to law enforcement to use social media, the question of privacy and civil liberties arise.  Many social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have policies which ban the use of data for surveillance purposes.  Although many companies have also disclosed information to law enforcement without being asked to do in an effort to be proactive about issues they believe require attention from law enforcement.

Read the full article here to see what our partners Rachel Levinson-Walden, senior counsel for the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, and John Cohen, Director of the Rutgers Center for Critical Intelligence Studies have to say about this issue: https://abcnews.go.com/US/law-enforcement-officials-push-broader-access-social-media/story?id=55507706