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Is the use of Social Media a beneficial or detrimental too To Catch Criminals?

Grant Collins ENG122C41 Robert Dunaway April 12, 2012 With the countless technological advances made over the last ten years; one that has made the biggest impact on a world wide scale is the advancement of social media. Anyone that doesn’t have at least a Face book account is considered to be archaic; with over 845 million active users worldwide this interests intelligence agencies. With a huge percent of people using social media the potential effect on the world of crime is undeniable. With the use of people’s personal information to catch criminals, a line needs to be drawn in order to keep people’s rights on the top of the intelligence communities list. The spark for this essay topic of social media came from an online essay off of the magazine Wired. The essay entitled “U.S. Wants You to Hunt Fugitives with Twitter”, is based on a challenge sponsored by the U.S State Department in which the challenge followers must locate five fake fugitives placed in these five cities around the world; New York, London, Washington, Stockholm, and Bratislava. The five different cities are playing host to five jewel thieves and the twitter follower are meant to find the thieves within twelve hours and upload a photo of the thief to win the challenge and five thousand dollars from the U.S. State Department. After a team of students from MIT won this challenge, they did it with the help of over 4,400 people they recruited to help them with the hunt, “It was the first time the American government realized the power of Social media to mobilize large groups of people.”(Shachtman) As a result of this challenge a few of the winning members from MIT were sent to Kabul to help run a secret intelligence program, the program relied on seemingly-obscure data that is needed to gauge “the vitality of the Afghan insurgency”(Shachtman). The students from MIT made a great amount of progress in a matter of hours and were able to impress a lot of key government officials. From just reading this article people might feel that this is a great idea and can benefit in the capture of most wanted criminals, but is the use of social media truly only a positive thing or is the use of people’s private and personal information an infraction on the basic rights people are entitled to? Mark Zuckerberg the co-creator of Face book a website in which has over 845 million active users can almost be considered the creator of social media itself. In an interview with Mark he says, “When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.” This is an interesting quote of his because it seems to be a close-minded statement that is not taking into account the downfalls that occur from people expressing their voice; everything people say online is stored in a database and is all public information. I think sometimes that gets overlooked and there have been countless examples, like a teachers getting fired for party pictures posted on their profile and using quotes like, “teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte.” Many people believe that the First Amendment protects the people and lets face book posts or twits, on their own personal time are okay and in many court cases teachers like Stacy Snyder have been terminated due to the posting of “Party Pics” with suggestive captions, like the one that resulted in Stacy’s firing “Drunken Pirate”. Thinking that your employer is face book stalking you is a scary thing to think about, the social media cultures that people choose to participate in are not as private as they are made out to be. If your employer is investigating into your social media accounts, one has to realize that the government is as well. The Electronic Privacy Information Center or (EPIC) has recently come out with Department of Homeland Security documents that show the “keywords” that alert the monitors and lead to the tracking of those personal statements. The keywords consist of, attack, bomb, destroy, and kill, the thing about the keywords is that they are ever changing and can lead to the government tracking you for an innocent statement like, “Man I could destroy a hamburger.” It is great to have so many social media sites for people to get in touch with long lost friends or express their certain feelings, but the down side is agencies, advertisers, and marketers are using that info to sell products or in some cases use your words to get you or someone else convicted of a crime. In an interview I conducted with a Wheat Ridge Police detective I asked, “How often is face book, twitter or MySpace used to catch a criminal?” She said all the time, people post about crimes or post pictures about a crime thinking that the police can’t use any of that information against them. Her answer leads me to my next question, “Do you find the use of social media to be an invasion of people’s privacy?” Her response surprised me, she did feel it can be intrusive, but everything people post publicly on such websites can be used against the individual without a warrant. Also anything that is not public, like private messages or protected profiles a warrant is needed to continue with any searching. Detective Ells also described to me cases in which a police officer or detective will play to part of a younger female or male on face book in order to catch online predators, is very similar to what Dateline NBC does. After she expressed to me the various techniques used to catch criminals I asked, “Where is the line drawn, how far is too far?” She said anything other than what is public information on the newsfeed or on a face book wall, a warrant is needed to continue with the searching, the police departments have no special powers over anyone else and they need to be able to justify why they need to access the information that they are requesting. This interview did provide great insight into the limitations placed on law enforcement agencies and it does make me a social media user feel better that the police cannot access any information that they want just because, there are laws in place to protect the social media users. Social media is a business just like anything else, when Mark Zuckerberg claims to use face book to better people’s lives, it may be true but he is also receiving a hefty paycheck as well. Ever notice when you login into your social media accounts the ads placed on your screen are related to the interests you have, the websites you visit, and the posts you make, advertisers dig deeper into your user profile to make a sale. This may be considered an invasion of privacy, but it happens and every word you type or picture you post, whether you delete it or not can be retrieved and used to help advertisers appeal to your market interests. I enjoy social media and how it makes talking to people easier, but does in fact make it easier for intelligence agencies to keep tabs on people that may threaten our “National Security.” Social Media is very beneficial to aid in the capture of criminals, but is limiting the basic rights American’s have protected by the United States Constitution. I am a supporter of ways to catch dangerous criminals, but it seems with every new innovation to aid law enforcement agencies normal everyday Americans have to sacrifice.

Bibliography 1. Facebook. "Newsroom." Facebook's Latest News, Announcements and Media Resources. Facebook Inc. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. . 2. Shachtman, Noah. "U.S. Wants You to Hunt Fugitives With Twitter." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 01 Mar. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. . 3. Wikipedia. "Facebook." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 Dec. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. . 4. "Mark Zuckerberg." BrainyQuote. Xplore. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. . 5. Simpson, Mike. "Social Networking Nightmares." NEA -. National Education Association, 2010. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. . 6. Ells, Cheri. "Social Media Effect on Crime." Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2012. 7. "Social Networking ProCon.org." Social Networking ProCon.org. Nonprofit, 13 Mar. 2012. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. .