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Social Media Surveillance and Law Enforcement

Part 1: This article opens by shedding light on the pressure that government departments have undergone to use social media as a form of surveillance. With this new ability to screen people's online activity has come many positive preventative actions, which have quite literally saved lives. The downside to this social surveillance is rooted in the way this research is conducted. This process threatens Fourth Amendment rights, which protect against unreasonable search and seizure by the government. Social media has been manually filtered for a long time, leaving the door open to biased searches. These searches are only now starting to be automated. Because the online space is so new, there is a significant learning curve in order to understand the nuances of the medium.

Part 2: Online culture operates differently than that of the physical world. Social media lists our connections solely as 'friends' while in reality there are many levels and types of relationships between people. I think that social media is a great place to start for searches and screenings like these for simplicity's sake. However, claims sourced from social media cannot stand; not without proper support from real-world evidence and connections. When used in tandem with other styles of research, I believe that social media screening is a very useful tool. Even though it is a bit of a debated practice, I do believe that more good than harm is offered by this method, when applied appropriately.

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