Dragnet 2.0

When vandals destroyed police cruisers in Montreal, police asked viewers to identify suspects in YouTube videos.

A new friend request on Facebook or a follower on Twitter is often a pleasant surprise. It could signal anything from a reconnection with an old high school friend to the pursuit of a new love interest.

But when that new online pal is your local police department, you may want to think twice about your next status update.

Canadian activists say they worry police are increasingly using social media websites as tools for surveillance and social control.

Nathalie Des Rosiers, a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, says she was concerned to find out the Toronto Police Service was following her on Twitter.

"I have to say I got scared," says Des Rosiers. "It felt suddenly that I was being monitored."

But police departments across Canada say social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are an important way to connect with the public in the digital age.

Const. Scott Mills, who runs the Toronto Police Service's social media initiatives, says the public response so far is positive.

"People have said that it's really opened up the doors to constructive and meaningful dialogue between the public and the police," says Mills. "The goal is to do it more and do it well."

The Toronto police use Facebook and Twitter to announce community events, traffic updates, and recruitment opportunities, as well as investigate crimes. Organizations are allowed to post missing persons' ads and ask for help with identifying suspects. A "Leave a Tip" tab invites people to provide leads on crimes anonymously.

Mills says YouTube has been particularly useful in communicating with the non-native English speaking community in Toronto. One case involves the murder of Yuan (Tracy) Tian, a 31-year-old woman from China who was found dead in her apartment on Sept. 2, 2008. He says the Toronto police translated videos into Cantonese and Mandarin and posted them on Chinese-language websites. Although the crime remains unsolved, the translated videos allowed more people to give tips to the police, Mills says.

"You try to drill into where you think people might have information … and put out a way for them, if they don't speak English, to contact somebody who does speak English," he says.

But he adds it takes more than starting Facebook or Twitter accounts to fully exploit social media.

"You've got to have positive and good relationships," he says. "You have to have people who trust you and become friends with you and follow you."

I'm concerned that people will be charged, intimidated, harassed, because of what they think and not because of what they do.
— Nathalie Des Rosiers

In September, the Toronto Police Service temporarily blocked users from posting photos and links on its Facebook page after pornographic images appeared. The pictures remained on the page for several hours before police removed them.

Two days after the incident, a discussion board on the site suggested police used the images as an excuse to silence dissent, adding the tactic "was becoming all too familiar." The discussion's subject heading was "Naturally you have stopped free speech again."

Police departments across Canada slowly following suit

Other police organizations are taking a slower approach to social media than their Toronto counterpart.

The Montreal Police Service uses its Facebook and Twitter accounts to post information about recruitment and community events, says Const. Yannick Ouimet. But they don't have the personnel to use the tools to build rapport with the public.

"It would be a lie for me to tell you that it's a two-way dialogue. We can't spend the time answering back all the questions," says Ouimet. "You need somebody to be on that 24 hours a day because there are people asking questions back and forth 24 hours a day."

Ottawa police plan to jump on the social media bandwagon in 2011, says Jimmy Mui, an executive director of the city's police service.

Mui says the "power is there" for social media to be used effectively, but there are cases where it has worked against police officers.

In New York, a defense lawyer used an arresting officer's Facebook and MySpace statuses to reduce his client's charges from a felony to a misdemeanor, says Mui. The officer's mood description on MySpace was "devious" on the day of the arrest, and his Facebook status stated he was watching the 2001 movie "Training Day" to "brush up on proper police procedure." The movie depicts a corrupt Los Angleles narcotics officer.

"We've seen that those (police organizations) that enter without a strategy suffer later on," Mui says. "You need an objective."

Tool for social control, critics say

Des Rosiers of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association says she worries social media will allow police to abuse their powers.

Police based many of the charges laid at the G20 summit in Toronto on information found by police on protesters' Facebook and Twitter accounts. Des Rosiers says arrests before and during the summit raised questions about the right to protection against arbitrary arrest and the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

Images such as this one, shared via Twitter, were a regular part of the G20 protests. Police made arrests based on messages broadcast over Facebook and Twitter.

"I'm concerned that people will be charged, intimidated, harassed, because of what they think and not because of what they do," Des Rosiers says.

There's an additional risk that police might use social media to silence and intimidate, says Des Rosiers.

"[Protesters] are fearing that their exposure could be used by the police to either pursue investigations or come back to haunt them," she says. "It's there to tell them, 'Listen, we're watching you and we know who you are.' "

Kevin Walby, a doctoral student in sociology at Carleton University, says some police posed as activists on social media websites during the summit.

He says an increased online police presence could force activists to stick to personal contact as their main mode of organizing.

"Maybe five years ago social movement organizers could … be safe communicating over the Internet," he says, "but now I think it's time to go back to notes in shoes or face to face."

Despite the criticism, Mills says the Toronto police are seeing good results since they started using social media.

In the three years of use by Toronto Crime Stoppers the number of anonymous tips tripled from 300 to 1,000 a month, which is more than any other Crime Stoppers program in the world, he says. He adds that social media also helped them stop school shootings and prevented five youths from committing suicide, after community partners tipped off the Toronto police through these websites.

We've seen that those (police organizations) that enter without a strategy suffer later on. You need an objective. — Jimmy Mui                                      

"[Community organizations] had relationships with some kids that were at risk for suicides and they saw what they were saying at the right time and reached out to them in conjunction with the police," says Mills, "and we've actually managed to get them back on the right track as a result. It's pretty good stuff."

"It's not just going out and spying on people. It's actually … engaging in dialogue with the public and trying to problem solve in that dialogue. It's amazing what comes to you."

Social media in the media

Crime happens. A lot. Sometimes citizens have the details. And sometimes they share those details with the world.

Here are a few important Canadian cases where news came to us through postings by ordinary people on the World Wide Web.