EFF Social Media Monitoring: “Social media includes some of the most intimate details of our lives, including our health information, likes and dislikes, political views and religious beliefs, sexual orientation, and people with whom we associate. Its content includes usernames, bios, contact information, status updates, comments, photos, videos and streams, event postings, friend or follower lists, friend requests, groups, private messages, account creation dates, location, and more.  Law enforcement agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement monitor the social media posts of asylum seekers, tourists seeking visa waivers, or people applying for immigration benefits. Social media information is collected from travelers–including American residents–even when they are not suspected of any illegal activity. This surveillance extends to anyone in these people’s networks. The Department of Homeland Security has offered no transparency about its multi-million dollar program of spying on immigrants’ and other foreign visitors’ social media posts, which it uses as evidence in deportations and visa denials. Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies all monitor social media accounts. While this has typically been done to surveil political activists, at times this has been much broader. For example, LAPD officers were ordered to note the social media information (including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media accounts) of every civilian they questioned, according to an internal July 2020 memo obtained by the Brennan Center. This included those who were not arrested or even accused of a crime, let alone found guilty of committing one.  Police may combine social media monitoring with other technologies, such as face recognition, to identify individuals.  Since social media posts are highly contextual, police may misinterpret innocuous language, song lyrics, or inside jokes, leading to criminal consequences for individuals who may not have even been aware they were under surveillance…” See also:

• The Public Has a Right to Know How DHS is Spending Millions to Spy on Immigrants on Social Media
• Four Steps Facebook Should Take to Counter Police Sock Puppets
• Social Media Monitoring | Brennan Center for Justice
• LAPD Social Media Monitoring Documents | Brennan Center for Justice
• Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Product Marketed to Target Activists of Color | ACLU of Northern CA
• How to reform police monitoring of social media