How far should social media monitoring, intended to prevent crimes not yet committed and to ensure safety, go? There is, partly after the riots in London, a call for more tapping and even for an obligation for internet providers to also store social media messages in the same way that internet traffic is stored.
It is not yet clear how much social media is tapped in the Netherlands . What is clear is that the police have all kinds of software that can do this. It is important to maintain a constant balance between the infringement of privacy, the risk of prior conviction and national security. The relative ease with which social media can be tapped can lead to continuous and large-scale tapping as a precaution. This differs fundamentally in nature from tapping when there is a serious indication that someone is planning a criminal activity and the judge makes a decision on this. When is there a hard core of rioters and when are we dealing with a typical 'crowd' with a volatile and 'ad hoc' character and a structure with role divisions ((opinion) leaders and followers) that arise on the spot?
In addition to the question of how far the government may go in monitoring social belgium telegram data media, the question remains: what can you hear? Listening to social media can easily mislead you. Many are already aware of the relative publicity of social media messages and use them strategically. In the week after Haren, social media talked about new Project X parties in Gouda, Schiedam and Alkmaar, among others. Were these serious plans or were they just teasing jabs at the police? In the end, this did not lead to large parties, let alone riots.
All of this makes finding good clues in the haystack not easy. Small signals that eventually lead to attacks and/or riots can be missed, while a lot of noise can ultimately turn out to be about nothing. We must therefore ask ourselves how far social media monitoring may go, given its limited use. Ultimately, we want a police force that is also on the streets to catch criminals and to be able to enter into dialogue with us citizens. Not just a police force that only sits behind a computer screen.