Social Media Surveillance and Law Enforcement

 Area 1; With near unfettered access of social media profiles available to them, it seems that Law Enforcement entities have seen fit to begin using this to their advantage. It is easy enough to follow the newsfeeds of publicly available profiles, especially in instances where people are highly active users. This provides opportunity for Law Enforcement build cases against unsuspecting parties, unbeknownst to them. Being able to search out previous offenders, people of interest, and also their associates also allows them to construct a rough anthropological picture of events after a crime has been committed, or possibly during the act or prior to it. This provides enormous opportunity for coordinated efforts in apprehension or prevention of many crimes from assaults and drug dealing, all the way up to monitoring for activity on possibly terrorist attacks.

Area 2; I am far from in favor of social media being used to the extent that it seems to be in some instances; as in from the article, where a set of brothers from a 'crew', and ultimately had their lives permanently affected due to historical documentation of unproven allegations from their social media histories. While there is great opportunity to monitor activity that carries enormous destructive potential, there is also massive occasion to abuse the access. A person, regardless of their criminal past, should not be forfeiting their reasonable right to privacy if they have already paid or are currently compliant in repaying their debt to society. This can constitute a massive overreach of their duties on the part of Law Enforcement, and has the possibility of abuse of these systems as in cases such as Seattle and Portland, where there were instances of people's personal pages being monitored and arrests being made for participating in protests.