Social-Media
Instagram, Etsy and LinkedIn were used by FBI to identify an arson-accused protester.
A analysis by Etsy, LinkedIn accounts, a number of Instagram videos, and a few searches Google created for FBI agents describe a masked woman who was accused during the recent philadelphia protest of setting two police cars on fire. Protests were held on 30 May as a result of the murder of George Floyd by the police.
The case illustrates how police were able to use social media and other publicly accessible online documents to recognize demonstrators from a limited amount of information, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
The FBI accused, Lore Elisabeth, aged 33 years, is facing a compulsory minimum sentence of seven years if convicted, with a fine of up to $250,000, according to NBC. The fine is now imposed.
Civil rights defenders have cautioned, that social media devices, that have recorded police brutality, are used by law enforcement for crowd-sourced surveillance, as demonstrations have continued across the USA against structural racial violence.
The Philadelphia Inquirer told Paul Hetznecker, a criminal defense attorney representing Blumenthal, 'The social media have fueled many protests and have also become fertile grounds for government surveillance.' "They lost consciousness I think." "I think.
As shown in this example , simple methods such as Google search and social media scans are as easy to identify as advanced instruments such as facial recognition. For instance, Philadelphia police have tested controversial Clearview AI facial recognition services, but the technology in this situation was not required at all.
US lawyer William M. McSwain in a press statement called the incendiary car for two police cars a "violent and disgusting act," claiming that all those involved would be identified and arrested by law enforcement.
"We support people's right to assemble and petition their government peacefully in the US Attorney's office for First Amendment," said McSwain. "The fire of the police car, however, has nothing to do with peaceful protest or legitimate message."
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, FBI agents were only able to access helicopter images from the local news station at the beginning of their investigation. That showed a woman wears a bandana throwing flaming rubbish in a sedan's broken window.
When they searched for videos of the protests in Instagram and in Vimeo the officers could find more images of the incident and spot a peace sign tattoo on the right forearms of the woman. Having found a set of 500 photos of the demonstrators shared by a fans photographer, they saw clearly what the woman wears, with the slogan "Keep the Immigrants." "Keep the Immigrants. The Racists Deport.''
The only place where this exact T-shirt was purchased was at an etsy shop in which a consumer called "alleycatlore" just a few days before the protest left a five-star rating for the seller. Google then found an suitable profile on the Poshmerk online fashion marketplace with the name of the user "Lore-elisabeth," using Google to search for this username.
The Lore-elisabeth research led to the LinkedIn profile of one Lore Elisabeth Blumenthal, who was working in a Philadelphia massage studio as a massage therapist. Videos hosted by the studio depict a person with the same distinctive tattoo for peace on his neck. An address was provided by a phone number for Blumenthal.
A summons to the Etsy vendor showed "Keep Immigrants," as stated by NBC Philadelphia. The T-shirt had been recently delivered to the same address. Deport the Racists.
The case has become "political" because prosecutors have agreed to prosecute Bloumhal nationally, rather than locally, said Blumenthal 's lawyer, Hetznecker. Hetznecker also told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the public was not aware of how electronic knowledge was transmitted, as was Blumenthal. He stated that the case showed worrisome similarities to previous instances of US law enforcement surveillance.
"The problem is whether they have violated everyone's privacy interests by searching for one or two people," he said. "It is the same paradigm used after 9/11 to profile Muslims as the African American profiling paradigm."
