University Star

Last summer, protesters in Iran mobilized and spread their message with a new tool — Twitter.

Because Iranian officials were not familiar with Twitter, it was a beneficial tool for mass protests against the June 12 election results. However, dependence on Twitter turned disastrous.

A group calling itself the “Iranian Cyber Army” hacked Twitter for several minutes, and officials monitored Twitter to see when and where protests were held. Members of the Green Movement have since dropped Twitter as a communications tool.

Certainly infiltration by state authorities and their sympathizers are unique to an authoritarian government. Yet across the United States, a lesser trend is underway as police departments have adopted tactics of their own. Since this method is legal, online networkers should be more careful about posting plans for a Friday night.

Police in New Jersey set up fake Facebook identities, for example, and added students from the local high school as friends according to a May 15 CBS News article. Once the police were granted access and “accepted,” they learned of several students who planned to bring drugs and alcohol to a prom party. Police then arrested four 17-year-old boys as they were on their way to a party with marijuana and alcohol.

There are two important things to recognize when it comes to social networking sites and privacy.

The “Terms of Use” for each site say users’ personal information uploaded to such sites may be disclosed to governmental agencies. The odd thing is the “invited” rule even applies to officers who create fake accounts and fake identities in an attempt to gather information from certain users.

The University Police Department has admitted to monitoring social networking sites in order to find information. In an Oct. 6 article in The University Star on vandalism to university property, a UPD officer said “(The police) will be monitoring Facebook, Myspace and Twitter...” for information related to the crimes.

The article suggested UPD might collaborate with “outside agencies, such as San Marcos police, to identify and compare (graffiti) tags.”

There is no specific example of when San Marcos or Texas State police have used a social networking site to find information about parties, but both agencies have the ability.

Next time police arrive at a party, it might not have been the neighbors who complained, but someone on Facebook who put the information in their hands.

—Luis Baez is political science junior