LOS ANGELES (KNX) — Newly obtained documents reveal that the Los Angeles Police Department has been monitoring social media for more than a year, working with a polish company to collect data on individuals, groups and activities related to an array of topics, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
At least twelve collections of documents totaling more than 10,000 pages were obtained by the Brennan Center after submitting a request under the California Public Records Act (CPRA), it said Wednesday.
The documents contain series of documents related to social media and ultimately uncover a relationship between LAPD and “Edge NPD,” a European software development company based in Poland, among other digital tracking companies.
Mary Pat Dwyer, a fellow in the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center. While the LAPD did not respond to KNX’s inquiry about the documents, she spoke with KNX In Depth to discuss what the Brennan Center uncovered and called it "eye opening."
“There are two things that we take away from these documents. One is the volume of activity that they’re monitoring online. This is a fairly short trial period [with Edge NPD], only a little bit over a month, and yet LAPD collected nearly two million tweets in that time,” Dwyer said.
“The other thing that's really striking … we saw tweets coming in where the only ‘limiter’ on what the LAPD was collecting were a set of very broad search terms, nearly 200 of those, and that the tweets needed to be in English.”
The broad terms, Dwyer said, led to the collection of nearly 70,000 tweets per day. A number that she believes could not be remotely useful to police for public safety.
“I think it’s also important to point out that within these search terms are concepts that the police really have no business monitoring online because they’re simple expressions of speech and association that are protected by the first amendment,” Dwyer said.
Why Poland?
Dwyer said this isn’t the first time the LAPD has connected with a social media monitoring software, which is more concerning to the Brennan Center that the most recent company being in Poland.
“We see [LAPD] looking for these tools over and over again that do bring in this vast amount of data on these noncriminal topics,” she said, explaining that the Brennan Center has documentation showing LAPD has tried to work with, worked with or done trials with at least 10 companies.
“People are permitted to say online that they have concerns about policing or that they want to participate in a protest,” she said. “And that in and of itself is not something that is a safety risk or that is related to any criminal activity.”
Last week, Twitter said it had suspended Edge NPD's "ABTShield" account "based on evidence that the firm violated its policies by deviating from approved uses," according to The Guardian.
The newspaper said Twitter did not elaborate on why the account was suspended.
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