Assignment:
Topic:
Mining Social Media Data for Policing, the Ethical Way
Associated Articles I found as an example to the subject:
As one example, the city of Huntington Beach, Calif., used social media monitoring to inform its policing efforts during the U.S. Open of Surfing in 2015, an event that often leads to increased crime along with the large crowds it attracts. Using tools from GeoFeedia, a company that offers location-based analytics platforms, the Huntington Beach Police Department was able to monitor social media activity near parking garages in the area - places where teens often meet to drink or use drugs, occasionally leading to altercations over drug deals or other more serious crimes. The software monitored keywords like "gun," "fight" and "shoot" to identify potential crimes and the city then sent patrol officers to investigate incidents.
While this intervention was relatively successful, shortly thereafter, police departments in Baltimore, Chicago, Fresno, Calif., and other cities received significant pushback for their social mining efforts. Reminiscent of the recent Cambridge Analytica controversy, these law enforcement agencies partnered with third parties like GeoFeedia that gained access to back-end data streams via APIs. Internal police records from Working Narratives revealed that one of GeoFeedia's stated goals was to bypass privacy options offered by sites like Facebook. Platforms like GeoFeedia and a similar tool called Snaptrendstied in dummy accounts - fake profiles that often use provocative pictures of women to attract suspects as friends or followers - to track users' location across social media sites, regardless of whether or not they publicly geo-tag their posts.
Instructions
In a group process, identify an emerging public safety ethical trend or organizational ethical issue and present the issue in a PowerPoint presentation posted to your Group Discussion area. Groups will be assigned by your instructor during week 2 of the course. As a group, conduct research into your issue and incorporate the results of your research, including high quality references, into your presentation.
The Ethical Issue Presentation shall cover all of the following topics:
• Presentation and discussion of academic and anecdotal resource materials
• Deconstruction of current public safety ethical issues related to your topic
• Discussion of the results of your group research into public safety ethical issues related to your topic, including high quality references
• Identification of acceptable and effective professional public safety ethical principles related to your topic, including possible best practices
• Include references on separate slide, in proper APA format
The presentation should be 10 to 15 slides in length, excluding table of contents, graphics and tables, and references. Be sure to include references to support your presentation. In the following descending order of preference, information sources must be either peer-reviewed articles, government reports, or other sources approved by your instructor. Internet information sources from other than authoritative sources are discouraged.
Each group member must also complete an evaluation that will factor into the grade provided for the "group member evaluation" portion shown in the table above. Each group member may not get the same grade as the group member evaluation portion will be determined by other group members. These evaluations will be kept confidential. Not submitting group evaluation form, or submitting them late will result in a late penalty. The form is available in the Course at a Glance > PSAD 414 Group Participation Form.
Group discussion on presentation:
S: I really like Josh's idea. With whatever topic we go with, I think it needs to be an emerging trend that can related to a large spectrum of public safety and has a nationwide impact on the questions related to its ethical implications.
D: I like this idea as well... I think we can get a lot on the ethical implications of social media monitoring especially with a lot of public safety offices using it these days. It is an upcoming trend that I think would be a good topic for us to discuss and learn about.
B: So our organizational ethical issue is social media use?
D: I believe what the post was talking about was policing and monitoring social media. Having people that are watching social media with special websites and tools. There are many agencies that are able to have key words like "bomb" or "shooting" etc. and when those words come up there is an alert process to notify that someone or some agency should look into it. We actually use one of these systems at my job and get alerts if something is going on in social media and 9 times out of ten we get the notification from social media outlet before any news or police station.
That is what I got out of his post but please if I am wrong someone correct me. I would think that the ethical issue would be looking into someone's social media without their consent and bypassing all security settings that the user has set up.
M: That makes sense to me. Seems like what we are trying to do here is link invasion of privacy with ethics right? When we dive into someone's social media account to gauge and ultimately label their activity as dangerous, we as public safety officials are being unethical. Right? Are we leaning towards saying that it is unethical to "label" certain activity as dangerous, such as using the words "bomb" or "shooting" (among others) in one's social media posts? This certainly goes against freedom of speech, but where do the ethics come into play? I suppose it would be unethical to essentially put people on a "watch list" or open an investigation on someone because of what they said on social media. I think this topic can go in many different directions. We probably need to narrow it down to something specific and get everyone on the same page.
Options:
1. Public safety professionals using social media for public relations. Essentially "oversharing" operational information with the public and blurring the lines between the citizen and the police.
2. Police using social media as an intelligence or evidence gathering platform. Value of the data collected and the potential risks associated with criminalizing innocent people because of their social media posts. This leads to public misconception of or bias towards individuals or groups of people and possibly even unfair trials.
3. Social media being used by law enforcement in a way that interferes with democratic rights such as, freedom of expression. Using social media to "flag" people (that is kind of what I talked about above). What is private and what is public? There are a lot of organizations that protest this use of social media.
These are just few ideas. Standing by for team feedback.
M: Base upon everyone's comments thus far, it looks like we are all ok with doing our project on the ethical implications of social media use in public safety. Specifically, law enforcement using social media to collect intelligence and monitor the activity of citizens thus interfering with our right to privacy and freedom of expression. Also, the ethical issues with bypassing privacy settings on particular sites in order to collect data on individuals so that they can be "flagged" for further monitoring. Overall, we as citizens feel it is unethical and imposing whereas law enforcement feels that it is a necessary activity to stop crime and prevent terrorism. What is right? What is wrong? What is ethical? What is not?
Am I correct here? Is everyone on track with that?
Assuming everyone agrees, we need to move forward with our presentation. I am totally open to ideas on how/where we want to drill deeper into this. I believe that if we all generate a minimum of two slides each, we should be good to go.
Please identify what area within this topic you want to write about (what will your slides be about?).
Standing by for your comments. Reminder: this is due next week!
S: Thanks for laying this out Matt. Some ideas for slides:
-Executive Summary (1 slide) - Overall points of our findings related to unethical practices in social media montioring by governmental agencies
- History (2 slides) - Historical talking points related to research discovered which brought us to this new trend
- Current Trend (2 slides) - Main research discoveries related to our topic (this will be the discussion of the actual issue)
- Alternatives (3-4 slides) - This can be our proposed alternatives that are ethical to achieve similar results based on our findings
-Conclusion (1-2 slides) - Reinforcing the overall opinion of unethical practices and elaborating on alternative meathods
M: One thing to think about: usually when I am creating Power Point presentations, it is for the purpose of briefing or training people. In those situations, less text more talking is best. However, since we aren't going to actually 'present/brief' this slide show, we need to ensure that our respective slides are populated with enough text and graphics so that they are not up for interpretation. I'm not saying that every slide should have a several hundred word essay on it, but our bullet points need to be thorough due to the fact that we won't actually be able to talk about and/or explain them. Just food for thought. Hope that makes sense.
B: So far it looks like Joshua is doing current trends and you are doing the history slides. In order for our presentation to be cohesive, if Joshua could provide us with some of the curernt trends he's looking at, I could work on Alternatives. These two areas need to go together.
M:I'll take care of the Executive Summary/Introduction. I'll probably generate at least two slides. Once we are all done, I'll take care of the table of contents as well.
J:No problem, I will get a fee things posted by tomorrow sometime. I have to back at work in 4 hours. So I will get this topics posted as soon as I can get a little time to do some more research.