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Los Angeles The LAPD instructs officers to collect information about social media accounts and email addresses when interviewing people they have detained, according to documents obtained from the Brennan Justice Center at New York University School of Law.
The Brennan Center has submitted requests for public recordings to the LAPD and police departments in other major cities, finding, among other things, that “the LAPD instructs its employees to collect extensive information about the social media account from those they encounter in person using an interview card. on the spot (FI) “. The LAPD initially opposed the provision of documents, but provided more than 6,000 pages after the Brennan Center sued the agency.
One such document, a note from then-Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck in May 2015, states that “when filling out an FI report, officers must request information about a person’s social media and email account and included in the “Additional information” field. “This includes Twitter, Instagram or Facebook accounts,” the note said.
This may be an unusual policy, although the LAPD has been doing it for years. “Obviously, there’s nothing stopping employees from filling out FI cards for every interaction they take on patrol,” wrote Mary Pat Dwyer, a lawyer and associate in the Brennan Center’s Freedom and National Security Program. “More specifically, our review of FI card information in 40 other cities did not reveal other police departments that use the cards to collect data on social media, although details are scarce.” The center reviewed “publicly available documents to try to determine whether other police departments regularly collect social media during on-site interviews,” but found that “most are not very transparent about their practices,” Dwyer told Ars on Friday. .
While people may refuse to provide employees with details of their social media account, many people may not know their rights and feel pressured to provide the information, Dwyer told Ars. “The courts have found that stopping people and requesting voluntary information does not violate the Fourth Amendment and people are free not to respond,” she told us. “However, depending on the circumstances of the suspension, people may not feel this freedom to leave without answering. They may not know their rights or hope to end the meeting quickly by providing information to ensure that this is not the case “does not escalate. “
Since January 2020, the Brennan Center has also been looking for police records from Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington, but is still struggling to get all the information requested.
Data allows for “large-scale monitoring”
The on-site interview is defined as “a brief detention of a person, whether on foot or in a vehicle, based on reasonable suspicions, in order to establish the identity of the individual and resolve the police officer’s suspicions of criminal activity”, according to the International Policy Model Association. to police chiefs for on-site interviews and staff searches. On-site interview cards can play a significant role in investigations.
“These maps make it easy to monitor both the people on whom they are gathered and their friends, family and associates – even people suspected of any crime,” Dwyer wrote. “The information from the maps is submitted to Palantir, a system through which the LAPD aggregates data from a wide range of sources to increase its monitoring and analysis capabilities.”
Apparently, employees have a wide discretion in choosing the people for whom they record information, and in some cases have falsified the information entered. Last year, The Los Angeles Times found that the LAPD unit “under the control of officers who allegedly forged field interview cards depicting people as gang members” played a huge role in the production of these cards. ” “The LAPD’s ‘metropolitan department’ accounted for about 4 per cent of the force, but represented more than 20 per cent of the field interview cards issued during the last 18 months.” Times wrote. Police officers can fill out these cards “to document the meetings they have with anyone they interrogate in their rhythm,” the report said.
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