Information & Communications Technology Committee (ICT) FAQ Document Social Media

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1 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Social Media (SM) SM has enabled mass communication, collaboration and coordination on an increasingly massive variety of digital platforms most of which are free (or ridiculously cheap) and all of which are virtually unhindered by laws, law enforcement, private entities or nation states. SM is like the wisdom of crowds on steroids! Don Tapscott, co-author of the seminal books Wikinomics and Macrowikinomics, lays out a simple but compelling case that SM is changing mass media and mass communication and massively much more - personal relationships, formal education, private industry, democratic processes, healthcare systems, public safety everything! What impact has SM had on public safety and policing? SM is driving major changes in public safety and police/emergency service delivery. Canadians and people around the world are increasingly using SM to address public safety concerns, assess public trust issues and access police services. Just a few years ago, the vast majority of police leaders saw little value and lots of risk in SM. In that same period of time we have seen how SM has positively and negatively (but always significantly) impacted on local, national and international public safety; the Arab Spring, the UK Riots, the Occupy Movement, lone wolf terror attacks, etc. The Revolution may be televised BUT it will be Tweeted first! SM is being used by criminals, gangs, organized crime groups and terrorists to commit the full range public safety threat; flash mobs, on line bullying, identify theft, mass shootings, cyber terrorism, etc. We have seen the direct impact of SM in recent high profile public safety incidents; the Treyvon Martin shooting case, the Hurricane Sandy natural disaster, the LAPD Christopher Dorner manhunt and the Boston Marathon terror attack. Finally, and not insignificantly, SM has been used to attack the police brand. There are thousands of viral videos captured by ubiquitous CCTV/PDAs. There are thousands of citizenjournalists capturing every word and action by cops and posting them on blogs. There are thousands of Facebook and Twitter accounts (that reach out to hundreds of thousands of followers/friends) where officer misconduct and misinformation about police agencies are shared 24-7/365/globally! How can a police service develop a SM strategy? Police leaders in Canada and around the world are finally embracing the new SM reality by developing relevant policies, procedures and practices. Police officers are trying to master new technology, new terminology and new rules of engagement. Police leaders are trying to enable and empower their members to close the gap between the current state of SM in society and 1

2 the state of SM capacity in police agencies. Now there are thousands of official police agency SM accounts in operation across North America and Europe. Many of these police agencies have full SM strategies and/or have members who have become SM subject matter experts. Police Constables are using Twitter to better communicate and collaborate externally with young people and Chief Constables are using Blogs to better communicate and collaborate internally with their employees. You don t need to significantly increase your most scarce and most important resources (people, budget and time) in order to create a SM strategy. SM is a high power low cost new tool for police professionals. In fact, any police service that purchases a camera enabled PDA or laptop with internet access has all the hardware/software it needs for a full corporate social media strategy. The most important item that a police service needs is an officer who is good at both communication and community policing. Finally, a police service needs corporate leadership - the Chief or a senior officer who will provide the vision, support and resources to enable the front line officer to use SM. Combine off the shelf ICT, a dedicated front line police officer and a visionary police commander then you have all the core elements for a successful corporate SM strategy. Are there rules that can guide Chiefs in implementing SM? There are three basic SM rules in policing: First, police officers hate two things the way things are and change! Introducing and implementing a SM strategy in policing is always going to be very difficult. SM is not an easy fit in risk averse, conservative minded, para-military organizational structures/cultures. You need brave front line officers to use SM and brave leaders to champion the change. You have to answer questions like what s in it for me, how much will it cost, will it make cops more effective and the community more safe? Secondly, police can t do SM from behind a desk or through a computer/laptop/pda! A SM strategy has to focus as much on the social (the human element which requires real cops to engage with real community members in real public spaces about real issues) and the media (the information messages and the technology that creates the mediums). Lastly, police can t use SM as a silver bullet! Implementing a corporate SM strategy will not solve complex crimes, increase budgets/staffing or improve public trust. However, a properly implemented corporate SM strategy can enhance police effectiveness in all these areas (and more). 2

3 Front line officers are likely to be the first to adopt SM in their daily operations. This is due to the fact that they have the most exposure to the community specifically to youth in the community who will be the earliest adopters and heaviest users of SM in society. Front line officers will also be the first to realize that criminals are using SM in the virtual world to carry out crimes in the real world. Police officers like catching criminals so they will find a way to compete with the criminals on SM platforms. Can SM improve a police service s corporate communications strategy? SM had the biggest earliest impact in the area mass media and mass communication. Community use of SM has rapidly increased simply due to free open source SM platforms. SM use crosses socio-economic, demographic and geographic boundaries. SM has empowered the community to become citizen journalists people who create/share SM content that compliment and/or critique public institutions like the police with a global audience at minimal to no cost with little or no accountability/liability. Traditional communication patterns have drastically changed. Traditional news outlets have been going under and there has been a decline in advertising revenue as high as 48%. The public increasingly demands more current information and they want to be actively involved with decision-making through collaboration and content creation. There are more microonline communities who rapidly and effectively self-mobilize. Can SM be used in core police operations? Given the fact that criminals have been early and effective adopters of SM to carry out a wide and ever expanding range of criminal enterprises, SM can and has to be more than a corporate communications/community engagement tool for police agencies. SM can and should be a core policing tool! Typical police service legislation states that the core police service delivery mandates are; community policing, crime prevention, order management, emergency response, helping victims and law enforcement. Police agencies have been able to use SM to enhance each of these areas of core policing. Community Policing: The police in Manchester, England used SM to tweet from the beat in Manchester was the first major police agency to give PDA s with Twitter accounts to their beat officers with the explicit instructions to send out tweets as they patrolled city streets. Tweeted information included proactive patrols of problem addresses, conversations between the officers and the community, attendance at youth programs. The Manchester police received global mainstream media coverage for this initiative, they significantly increased 3

4 the number of friends and followers to their SM accounts and, most importantly, public trust and confidence increased. For more information on this project see: Crime Prevention: The police in Toronto, Ontario use SM to share information with the public regarding crime prevention, loss prevention, and traffic collision reduction. The TPS crime prevention officer of the year in 2012 was PC Ryan Wilmer of 23 Division for his innovative use of SM to enhance his community based efforts. One specific example of how the Toronto Police Service uses SM to partner with other criminal justice agencies and the private sector is Fraud Chat which started in For more information on this project see: What does the future state of SM in calls for service look like? Like all major technological and societal changes, there are great risks and rewards for SM in policing. As discussed earlier, there is an increased expectation from the public for the police to respond to SM calls for service for both emergent and non-emergent issues. If an officer hears someone yelling for help from inside a building can the officer ignore the call because it dint come through the CAD/dispatch system? Equally, can a tweet for help be ignored if it doesn t come through a 911 line? SM has increased the effectiveness/profitability of criminal enterprises, enhanced the ability of terrorists/anarchists to create public disorder while also creating new types of crime/victimization. Can a police agency respond to, investigate and prosecute criminal offences that are carried out almost exclusively over the Internet and SM platforms (cyber bullying, frauds, etc.)? Police agencies have to mitigate such liabilities by finding ways to validate all such calls for service (calling 911, yelling for help and SM postings). Police must create new public private partnerships to accelerate the research and development of Next Gen 911 technology and related business processes to meet the increased number and variety of demands. Police must also work with elected officials and the courts to create new laws locally, nationally and internationally that will better enable people to use SM and the internet in a safe, profitable, legitimate way these same laws must also enable the police maintain public safety on the information highway. There are also internal SM risks. Some members are using SM inappropriately in their professional and personal lives - this tarnishes the reputation and that of their police department. The prevailing practice when it comes to member misconduct via SM is to create specific rules for SM misconduct. This goes against the prevailing wisdom. Common sense and common decency should tell an officer to not post a racist comment on their personal SM accounts, to not disclose public safety information on a SM platform, to not air their personal 4

5 beefs about their supervisor on an official police service account, to not spend their day surfing on SM when they are getting paid a good wage to do an important public safety job. The officer s oath of office/oath of secrecy coupled with the police agency s core values, performance management systems and conduct governance should already be sufficient to cover SM conduct or performance issues. The other area of risk relates to how SM interfaces with the police and the rest of the criminal justice system. Police are now using SM as an investigative tool we are monitoring open source SM communications, we are gathering digital evidence that is both open source and private, we are involved in covert operations using SM, etc. There is significant evidentiary value in SM information and SM is increasingly relied upon to form our reasonable grounds for belief and varying degrees of foundation for search warrant applications. Ultimately, all SM information gathered must be considered as disclosable to a variety of public forums including but not limited to civil, criminal and federal courts as well as human rights tribunals, police oversight bodies, etc. As such, SM information needs to be managed following similar standards currently adhered to today for physical evidence (biological, digital, photographic, video and audio evidence). Standards in regard to format, presentation and storage need to be established based on the type of SM data being seized. Intelligence information gathered from SM requires more storage, new search and retention capability, format standardization, packaging, presentation, etc. Current legislation relating to information privacy, IP addresses, lawful access needs to be both adhered to and while new legislation in created and enacted (guidelines on information gathering in SM are not well documented or understood). Courts (judges, lawyers, etc.) have to be educated on SM and their input has to be sought to ensure acceptance and process Evidence continuity for digital content is also a consideration from crime scene management, to court disclosure and return dispositions for the original owner Defensible processes will ensure reliability of evidence, maintain credibility in the process and mitigate risk Policing is a business - we are in the business of improving public safety, public service and public trust! SM is not a panacea to fix all of what ails policing nor is it a threat to good policing. The challenge for business leaders and police leaders is to minimize the risks and maximize the rewards of SM. There is no doubt that is a powerful new business/public safety tool that will help committed police leaders, courageous front-line cops and good community partners to 5

6 better communicate, collaborate and co-create public safety. Implementing a SM strategy in policing is difficult but it been accomplished in a number of organizations. What does the future state of SM in policing look like? Globally, we are going to see a further and faster growth in the use of SM and digital platforms. There will be an app for everything you can think of! The rate of change will increase, the SM risks/rewards will increase and the gap between current police SM capacity and community expectations of police SM capacity will increase. Community members and criminals will continue to be early adopters of SM related technology for good and bad purposes. Police officers and civilian members will increasingly need to use SM to get the job done. Police leaders and police oversight bodies will be expected to leverage SM to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve accountability. More information can be found at: For questions please cacpictinfo@gmail.com Document Updated: November 14, 2013 This document is supplied by: The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Committee Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police 6