So, exactly how many laws did Oregon’s justice department break by scouring Twitter for folks who used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag?
At the moment it looks like two. There’s the state statute which says, “No law enforcement agency … may collect or maintain information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual, group …” etc. and so on. And now, it appears the state may have even broken the Wiretap Act.
In a case involving Google a couple of weeks ago, a federal appeals court found that although the behemoth had not broken any laws by collecting users’ web browsing information, the court stated that anyone that wants to track the URLs that someone visits will need a warrant to do so. The court said that since some URLs contain the contents of the page/site in the name, that info constitutes collecting the contents of communication, and doing that without a warrant is a violation of the Wiretap Act.
If a URL contains information that may be contained in or on a website, then what in the world does a hashtag signal?
A still-unnamed employee in Oregon’s Department of Justice was the brains behind the effort to track the hashtag—unless, of course, someone higher up is passing the buck. Said employee was using a demo version of an online search tool called Digital Stakeout to monitor “threats against the police or anti-police sentiments,” according to Oregon’s DOJ.
If that’s true, then that’s really, really sad. It’s sad because that would mean that whoever this person is, they have conflated criticism of police behavior and calls for accountability with being against police, which is not the case 99 percent of the time.
It’s also sad because it would mean that, in the realm of “intelligence gathering,” this person considers credible sources to be the likes of this jerk, and this one, and these over here.
SMDH.
The head of the state’s justice department has said she was appalled and ordered an immediate investigation into the affair. No date yet on when that investigation will conclude.