Microterrorism and the Socially Mediated Police State: Cops Watching Crims Watching Cops Watching Crims
1) Technology and Microterrorism:
The efficiency of the [Boston] manhunt was reassuring, but the chase also illustrated how the data we generate in our daily lives can get sucked up by the security apparatus. The Social Dead Zone sees the same surveillance technologies at work in the ghastly attack on the soldier in London. The blogger quotes J.G. Ballard's dark warning, “In a sense, we’re policing ourselves and that’s the ultimate police state”...
After the Woolwich attack something called the Opensource Intelligence Unit is conducting "strategic horizon scanning," which is somebody anxiously watching Tweetdeck for signs of trouble. So, one of those primly dressed officers in London’s Metropolitan Police Service could be reading your next tweet. But you are looking, too...
2) Criminals using social media to track police:
Senior police have warned officers that criminals are using Facebook and other social media to befriend them and tap into secret information.
A senior officer has told officers that cavalier use of social media puts members in danger of being tracked by criminals using "geo-tagging" technology...
"Criminals have been known to use information gleaned from social media to engineer relationships with police for the purpose of securing access to law enforcement information or to compromise a member's integrity," he said...
Supt Gleeson said police needed to be aware that they were not the only ones capable of using social media to gather intelligence.