Social Media Websites in Investigations
Contents
Significance of Social Media
Social media contains a vast amount of information in the form of posts, comments, images, videos, and beyond. This information, which is often publicly available on individuals' profiles, is increasingly being used by governments, businesses, and other institutions, to access knowledge that would otherwise be unavailable. The use of social media in investigations by entities such as governments, private investigators, insurance firms, law firms, and universities prompts a variety of ethical questions and implications for society, such as who should have the right to conduct social media investigations, and the specificity of information included in the search.
Technology
Social media investigations are conducted through social media aggregators such as Skopenow.com. Governments and business can gain accesses to individuals' social media footprints on Skopenow by simply entering the person-of-interests' (POIs) name and home location into the platform. Users can add additional inputs, such as the POIs phone number, address, age, and educational history, to augment the accuracy of the search. Once this information is inputed, Skopenow instantaneously compiles a report including the person-of-interests social media profiles, addresses, phone numbers, family members, and beyond. Skopenow then uses advanced textual and image analysis to find content to 'flag' for review; this technology is capable of automatically recognizing posts and images including the use of alcohol, drugs, weapons, profanity, racism, violence, and other customizable keywords.
Some other large social media investigation platforms include:
- Trustify (https://www.trustify.info/)
- X1 Social Discovery (https://www.x1.com/products/x1_social_discovery/)
- SMIAware (https://smiaware.com/)
- SocialNet (https://smiaware.com/)
Government
Many government agencies, such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, are increasingly using social media in order to monitor persons-of-interest. Government agencies are able to leverage social media platforms in order to conduct investigations by looking for evidence found throughout posts, images, comments, videos, and other content posted on these platforms.
Legislation
One extremely controversial act enacted under the Trump administration is a bill which allows the Department of Homeland Security to both ask for, and monitor, the social media accounts of all immigrants entering the United States, and even immigrants who are now naturalized citizens of the United States.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/26/dhs-monitor-immigrants-social-media/
Private Investigation
Social Media is also becoming increasingly prevalent in the realm of social media investigations. Private investigators are using social media content in order to gain more knowledge about their person-of-interest, such as harnessing its metadata to better track suspects, for skip tracing and bounty hunting.
Insurance
Insurance fraud is an $80 Billion dollar industry per year. Insurance Firms are increasingly using social media in order to conduct social media investigations. These investigations are becoming commonplace in a variety of insurance verticals such as life insurance, health insurance, and car insurance.
For example, many health insurance companies are now conducting social media investigations on its current and prospective clients to see if they can spot any inconsistencies within their applications. For example, the health insurance company can check to see whether their customers are lying about not smoking cigarettes or engaging in alcohol consumption.
Insurance companies are also conducting social media investigations for workers' compensation cases, by finding images of their person-of-interest conducting physical activities, after having applied for a workers' compensation claim.
http://www.insurancefraud.org/statistics.htm
Law
An increasingly large number of law firms are now using social media as part of the evidence discovery process, in a process that has now been coined as "e-Discovery."
https://cdslegal.com/knowledge/the-basics-what-is-e-discovery/
Higher Education
An increasing number of universities are conducting social media investigations on their prospective applicants in order to identify instances of underage drinking and drug use.
Ethical Implications
The use of social media websites in investigations has many ethical implications, especially surrounding the use of social media investigations by governments. For example, do social media investigations impede upon citizens' rights to privacy?
In the United States, for example, the constitution outlines a variety of personal protections granted to citizens to prevent government intrusion into citizens' personal lives. For example, the fourth amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (National Archives, Constitution ... https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs)."
Are these same constitutional rights afforded to citizens on social media? Many opponents suggest that citizens are not adequately protected from the government on social media.
In many ways, information obtained on social media is much more personal than information that could otherwise be obtained without a search warrant.
Proponents of this government intervention suggest that social media investigations help to keep the public safer, especially in the case of monitoring terrorism threats; additionally, all the information being accessed is public, meaning that information is already discoverable by anyone on the internet.
