US Police Social Media Surveillance Unfairly Targeted Muslims, Report Says
17 May 2018
Islamophobia Reports
A social media monitoring tool used by the Boston Police Department to
identify potential threats swept up the posts of people using the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter
and a lawmaker's Facebook update about racial inequality, according to a
report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union of
Massachusetts.
The ACLU says in a report based on documents obtained through a public records
request that the police department's use of Geofeedia to mine the internet
appears to have had little benefit to public safety while unfairly focusing on
groups such as Muslims. Boston police say the ACLU's conclusions are misguided
and that the program helped police successfully monitor events that could lead
to demonstrations or crowds and threaten security.
"Our main focus in all of this is public safety, not targeting speech, not
targeting people's political affiliations," said Lt. Det. Michael McCarthy.
"And quite frankly, to have the ACLU to even make that insinuation is not only
insulting, but it's completely misinformed," he said.
Boston police used Geofeedia for two weeks in 2014 and again for more than a
year starting in January 2015, according to the documents. The department's
use of the program became public in late 2016 after it solicited bids to spend
$1.4 million for another social media monitoring software.
Police later dropped those plans amid backlash from groups like the ACLU.
The now-defunct location-based program allowed officials to set up email
alerts for when certain keywords were used on social media. The alerts were
vetted by analysts in the department's Boston Regional Intelligence Center and
the data was discarded once it was determined it wasn't a potential public
safety issue, McCarthy said.
Geofeedia was used by police departments across the country until social media
companies cut off access to its data after concerns raised by the ACLU of
northern California in 2016. The software was also widely used by companies
interested in what their customers were saying about them online, and news
organizations for reporting.
The documents show Boston police searched for keywords they identified as
"Islamic extremist terminology," including words like "ISIS" and "caliphate"
as well as Arabic words such as "ummah," which means "community."
In the wake of the killing of three Muslim students near the University of
North Carolina in Chapel Hill, police also tracked the hashtag #muslimlivesmatter,
according to the report. After unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, over the fatal
shooting of a black man by a white police officer, police searched for the
terms like "protest" and "Ferguson."
The ACLU and the Boston-based Muslim Justice League say the tracking of common
Arabic words, like "ummah," is troubling. The ACLU said posts captured by the
program that mentioned "ISIS" were either jokes or references to issues in the
news.
"The Boston Police Department should never conduct surveillance targeting
political speech or religious expression, but that's exactly what their own
records show they did when they used this social media monitoring software,"
said Kade Crockford, co-author of the report and director of the group's
Technology for Liberty Program.
McCarthy said police didn't target individuals but chose keywords in response
to events happening around the country or based on information from federal
law enforcement. In the wake of the Chapel Hill shooting, for example, there
were concerns about possible demonstrations or backlash against the Muslim
community, he said.
"If we weren't diligent in our efforts to provide safe events for those
participating and attending ... then we wouldn't be doing our job as police
officers," he said.
Among those whose social media use prompted an alert was then-City Councilor
Tito Jackson, for a 2014 Facebook post about homelessness and poverty that
mentioned Ferguson, according to the report. City council was unaware at the
time that police were using the Geofeedia program, Jackson said.
"I spoke out about their 2016 plan to spend $1.4 million on a social media
surveillance system in part because I worried that the tool would be used to
track people not because they did something wrong but because of their
political views," he said.
"Little did I know that that had already happened," he said.
Islamophobia not an issue in the British press? You've got to be kidding
Miqdaad Versi is assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain,
wrote:
"This week the home affairs select committee's inquiry into hate crime turned
to Islamophobia and the press. Many greeted with surprise the idea expressed
by one witness: that anti-Muslim sentiment wasn't much of an issue in the
mainstream media.
That was the day before the Times issued a correction for the third in a
series of front-page stories focused on a fostering case in Tower Hamlets,
east London, last year. The first was headlined "Christian child forced into
Muslim foster care". The coverage had been called "disgracefully dishonest" by
Sir Martin Narey, head of the government inquiry into foster care provision;
attacked by the biggest non-government providers of foster care; and widely
derided as bigoted against Muslims.
At least the new editor-in-chief of the Daily Express recognised that many of
the stories published in the paper prior to his arrival had contributed to an
"Islamophobic sentiment" in the media, and that the Express's front pages had
sometimes been "downright offensive". This attitude is to be welcomed. And the
evidence to support his argument that a broader anti-Muslim attitude does
exist is overwhelming.
In the past year and a half, more than 40 stories on issues related to Islam
and Muslims have been corrected in mainstream national newspapers following
complaints I made. If inaccuracies of a similar type on the same subject every
one or two weeks do not demonstrate that there is a serious issue here, it is
unclear what would.
Why does this happen though? Let us not kid ourselves. Stories that play on
the public's fears and feed their prejudices are popular, especially at a time
when more than half of British people see Islam as a threat to western liberal
democracy. These sentiments might well be shared by journalists at the
newspapers concerned.
Of course, it is almost impossible to know for sure the motivations behind the
coverage. Yet it is hard to explain away front-page news stories such as the
Sun's "One in five Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis" (ruled "significantly
misleading" by the press regulator Ipso); the Times's "Muslims 'silent on
terror'" (a view not shared by senior counter-terrorism and police officers);
or the Daily Mail's "MPs' anger as Christian girl forced into Muslim foster
care", a story accompanied on Mail Online by a doctored photo.
How are we supposed to understand the fake "Islamic plot" to take over schools
in Birmingham in many papers; and the Telegraph and the Sun falsely suggesting
that two Muslims were responsible for a "Trojan horse" plot in Oldham?
In opinion pieces the problems are even more apparent. The Sun's Trevor
Kavanagh ended one column with the ominous question: "What will we do about
the Muslim problem then?"
These examples are the tip of the iceberg. Their frequency alone gives an
indication of the scale of the problem.
This is not a question of freedom of speech. It is about the choices of
editors to tolerate, if not encourage, bigotry in our newspapers. The National
Union of Journalists understands the issue and demanded an inquiry into press
Islamophobia by Ipso eight months ago. Done thoroughly, this could have an
impact similar to the Macpherson report, which labelled the police
"institutionally racist" and encouraged a sea change in attitudes."
So, what is Ipso waiting for?
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