Chicago Activists Turn the Tables on Police Surveillance

Last week, the ACLU of California released emails showing that Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provided Geofeedia, a social media monitoring company used by several law enforcement agencies nationwide, specialized access to feeds of bulk public data. Geofeedia used the feeds to spy on Black Lives Matter activists in Ferguson and Baltimore, the ACLU also revealed. Companies like Twitter stipulate that data should not be used to “investigate, track or surveil” users, and Twitter and Facebook both moved to restrict Geofeedia’s bulk access to user data.

But the controversy inspired one group of digital activists to turn the tables on law enforcement. Lucy Parsons Labs, a Chicago collective of web developers—their name and inspiration comes from the Wobbly-era labor organizer who Chicago police once called “more dangerous than a thousand rioters”—has released a new tool that allows the public to collect and share social media data on police officers. The web tool, OpenOversight, is aimed at the Chicago Police Department, one of many agencies across the country that uses Geofeedia to monitor public events.

The tool seeks to match the names and badge numbers of officers (obtained by records requests) with photos (drawn from social media) to help people file misconduct complaints.

So far, the app’s gallery of officer photos draws on publicly available data from Chicago Police Department social media accounts and Flickr. Lucy Parsons Labs estimates that they currently have photos of about 1 percent of Chicago Police Department officers. According to Jennifer Helsby, lead developer of the project, the site’s identification capacity will become more robust as members of the public upload photos of officers into the gallery. The team is hoping to eventually spread the tool to cities across the country.