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Flashmag July 2019 www.flashmag.net
whether he has committed a crime or not.
In the United States, criminal conspiracy laws allow for the representation of friends gathered at a party as evidence of a criminal act. So, publishing on social networks can have important consequences in the real world. And even liking a post can be used by police forces against individuals.
In an example very little publicized as it is something very banal in New York. Asheem Henry was arrested largely because of posts on social networks he had published as a teenager.
His youngest brother, Jelani, was subsequently arrested after being wrongly identified as a suspect in an attempted murder; At the time of his arrest, the prosecutor used evidence that Jelani, then 14, had "liked" publications concerning his brother's gang, in order to persuade the judge to refuse bail and to send him to jail in Rikers Island.
Jelani spent two years at Rikers Island awaiting trial - including nine months in solitary confinement - until his case was finally closed.
Matt Mitchell, security researcher at CryptoHarlem, says, "If you are black or brown, the content of your social networks has a cost: it's a virtual pipeline that sends you directly to jail.
Of course, actions that can draw attention to social media are random. Just clicking the "Like" or "Favorite" button on a comment on a message or sharing a video, or photos, is deeply contextual and can be almost impossible to interpret.
A "like", for example, could mean that the user approves the publication, or simply that he has knowledge of the publication and wants to know more, it can even be a way to mark his apprehension, his usability, or affection towards a user of the social network, whatever the content of the post. an outside observer cannot reasonably infer a concrete meaning from a brief online interaction, and research suggests that automated tools are also mediocre social media judges.
Apart from tracking down individuals the Intelligence Division, of NYPD explicitly monitors mass demonstrations.
According to the US Dept. of Justice documents, the division obtains information about upcoming protests and monitors real-time events, including "minute-by-minute information, on the size and behavior of the crowd of protesters."
This online activity is typically completed by field intelligence officers and is also transmitted in real time to the NYPD Operations Center during "any large-scale event".
The fusion centers, consisting of several law enforcement agencies created after 9/11 to facilitate the exchange of information under the auspices of the US Dept. of Justice and the Dept. of homeland security, also monitor social media alerts about protests.
Planned events can be predicted with surprising accuracy even before they occur, giving the government the opportunity to suppress dissent.
In 2013, citizens of Chengdu's central province staged a demonstration against a project using a hazardous chemical. The local government learned of the planned protests by monitoring Weibo, a kind of Chinese-style Facebook. Reacting immediately, the authorities then made school and work compulsory on the day of the demonstrations, considerably limiting the number of people demonstrating.
In France the monitoring of social networks by the police is even more critical. In addition to the American methods that it seems to apply in the suburbs of big cities like Paris or Marseille, France has found a coercive means against individuals, whose police services judge the suspicious activity by creating the "fiche S", (S file) that are issued by the intelligence services for anyone with potentially risky behavior, and to whom has been identified a dangerous ideology. It can therefore be, radicalized people, including Islamists, but also people linked to political movements of alt left or alt right, such as skinheads, or hooligans. Are also tracked, of course, all pro black movements that have established themselves in France, since institutional racism has helped the birth of a new breed of individuals who particularly despise the French establishment, to have