NEW YORK — Facebook and other social networks are targets for greater government surveillance, as the New York Police Department (NYPD) announced this week its plan to use social networks to track urban suspects in Operation Crew Cut. NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who plans to increase its gang unit to 300 officers who will have the use fake names and profiles to target minority users, made the announcement before he was scheduled to appear at the International Association of Chiefs of Police in San Diego on Tuesday.
The NYPD’s Facebook and social networking surveillance initiative, Operation Crew Cut, will not focus on recognized gangs, such as various neo-nazi skinhead gangs, Latin Kings or Crips and Bloods, but will instead target friends merely hanging out online displaying pride in themselves and their communities. The NYPD intends to target individuals online who boast, rap or otherwise engage in ‘big talk’… as young people do to create a psychological defensive front against ‘haters.” But NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly sees this behavior as an imminent threat worthy of cyber-surveillance.
“Their loyalty is to their friends living in a relatively small area and their rivalries are based not on narcotics trafficking or some other entrepreneurial interest, but simply on local turf,” Kelly said in his prepared remarks. “In other words, ‘You come in to my backyard and you get hurt. You dis’ [disrespect] my crew and you pay the price.’”
Operation Crew Cut may be a new name, but the NYPD tactics are not. The NYPD has been using social media and Facebook to track inner city residents for some time. In September, the NYPD brought charges against 49 alleged gang members from the “Rockstarz” and “Very Crispy Gangsters” in Brooklyn. The charges ended what the NYPD styled a three year turf war that allegedly included ten shootings. The NYPD allege that the feud was instigated by public Facebook posts of gang members bragging about their exploits and taking photos of themselves on ‘enemy’ turf. Apparently, these alleged gang members who are also Facebook users are tech savvy, but not smart in the ways of stealth and avoiding police surveillance, or so the NYPD would have the pubic believe.
“Because of these individuals’ insatiable desire to brag about what they did, these investigators were able to draw a virtual map of their activities and bring them to justice,” Mr. Kelly announced in a press release September.
“Members of both gangs made and accepted “friend” requests among their rivals’ gangs, so they could post threats to one another. The indictment charges that at least one such comment made reference to Simpson’s murder. After Santiago’s murder, Rockstarz members posted comments, including, “Rockstarz are up 3-0” on Facebook, according to the indictments. Other Rockstarz members posted Facebook photos of VCG members featuring threatening captions, the indictment charges.”
“The indictment charges that the gangs also cooperated to prevent witnesses from testifying against members of either gang. In a recorded phone call, from Riker’s Island, Rockstarz member Geraldo Mena told VCG member Brandon Matos the names of VCG witnesses who would testify against Mena, and Matos offered to take actions that would prevent the witnesses from making their court appearance.”
Incredibly, an internet search for evidence of social networking activity by those charged in the indictment produced no results, though we did find this screen cap of a Facebook fan page purportedly published by an alleged gang member. Notice how professional the guy’s profile picture looks.
Others are wondering whether these arrests under Operation Crew Cut aren’t fabricated or “false-flag” attacks meant to create a climate of terror which would compel less sophisticated citizens to trade their right to privacy and liberty for safety. “They put that shit up there [on Facebook] like they don’t know the cops is readin’ it,” one Crip member told the Village Voice. “That’s dumb shit — amateur shit. That’s how niggaz end up in jail.” He adds: “These fake-ass gangsters don’t know what they’re doing…” “The reason gangs survive is by not letting the cops know we is doin’ shit. We don’t do none of that Facebook shit…”
False flag events are a traditional tactic politicians use to create changes in laws through a fostering a domestic climate of fear or terror. In Nazi Germany, Hitler’s henchmen destroyed the Reichstag (government building which housed parliament) but blamed the socialists and Jews, his political foes. The result, these groups were imprisoned and eventually shipped to concentration camps for slave labor or extermination. Hitler achieved all of this through an emergency decree restricting personal liberty, including the right to free expression and a free press, limitations on the rights of association and assembly, warrantless searches of homes, property confiscation, and violations of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications “permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”
Once the German populous was softened or neutered by these changes in civil liberties, Hitler managed to obtain the enactment of additional law which allowed him to establish a dictatorship.
The NYPD has come under fire this year for its stop and frisk program, which residents complain targets diasporic Africans and Latinos almost exclusively, creating a climate of terror for residents of color whom studies have shown are typically released with no charges after being stopped and frisked.
The NYPD insists it has strict guidelines for the undercover detectives who will be patrolling the internet “to instill the proper balance between the investigative potential of social network sites and privacy expectations,” Kelly said in San Diego.
Earlier this year, the NYPD’s cyber dragnet resulted in the arrest of 43 minorities in the Brooklyn community, charged with gang related murders. The arrests were based on evidence collected from monitoring what the alleged gang members were saying about the cases on Twitter and Facebook, authorities claim.