Police Monitoring Facebook to Silence Potential Protestors

A recent story from Political Blindspot has been haunting me since it was published this October. Its title, “Facebook and Twitter Sync with Police to Squash Protests Before They Start” pretty much sums up the short article. Apparently at an International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Pennsylvania

“a Chicago Police Department official told attendees at this law enforcement conference that his department has been working directly with a ‘security chief at Facebook’ to block certain users from the social networking site if it is determined they have posted what is deemed ‘criminal content.’”

I did some research on the sources, and it seems legitimate. One of the quoted sources shows videos and pictures on their website of the conference, including a picture of the slideshow defining “Social Media Monitoring Tool.”

First of all, since when did it become acceptable for the PD to decide what “criminal content” is? Is that not something that should be determined by the Supreme Court? And what about the First Amendment right to free speech? We’re not talking here about finding evidence for murder cases. We’re talking about people organizing protests. We’re talking about Occupy Wall Street protestors. We’re talking about those following in the footsteps of those who organized and partook in the Arab Spring, which was so successful in overthrowing decades-old dictators and unfair governments in the Middle East thanks to the very social media outlets that the police in the United States are now trying to censor.

They are obviously afraid of something. Could it be the growing discontent of the people in a flawed and disintegrating system? Could it be the dissipating boundaries between billions of people around the globe thanks to social media, which makes it harder for us to be controlled by them?

If so, then good. We are doing something right as a people and using our right to free speech and freedom of the press, since Facebook and Twitter, although they are not media companies, are still ways for people to distribute news.

This censorship is wrong, but I don’t foresee it working. The people of the United States are too free to allow this degree of police state madness to really take ahold.

At least I really hope so.