There is a protest going on in North Dakota. Since it started I have been seeing my Facebook friends (none of whom live anywhere near there) using the check-in feature to say that they are there. As I understand it, the police are using Facebook to try to figure out who’s there and the check-ins are messing with their efforts.
This raises a few questions:
Is this kind of activity illegal? Is it considering interfering with police business or obstruction of justice or the like?
The check-ins I have observed have been from Canadians. So when one of my friends decides they want to visit the US, can they be refused entry into the country based on this? I am sure the border agents can refuse anyone for any reason but I am wondering about this in particular.
Is it too conspiratory of me to suggest that in Canada’s case the FBI is gathering information on who is protesting and then dutifully reporting that information back to Canada under the Five Eyes agreement? If people are willing to actively interfere with the police in a neighboring country it would just be common courtesy to report that back to their own police agencies, wouldn’t it?
In any case, I have often said that Facebook is the opposite of privacy and I think these people are nuts for tying so much personal information to something that the police are actively using against protesters.
Doubtful. The main (but not exclusive) challenge would be proving intent, which means people doing this probably shouldn’t say why they’re doing it if they want to be extra-safe.
As you acknowledge, “the border agents can refuse anyone for any reason,” which is mostly true for foreigners. And indeed the US has used things like social media posts as a reason to detain or even stop people at the border. Whether that’s likely or not in this case is a matter of opinion.
The FBI routinely gathers information like this about lawful protests. And they are routinely share it with the Canadians. Of course, that’s true of a whole firehose of information. Whether that’s something to take into account or not is more IMHO than GQ.
Since the police aren’t even looking at check-ins in the first place, there’s no danger in participating in the protests this way. Just don’t think you’re actually helping though, at least not the way the meme claims.
Right or wrong, doing any good or not, bad to be on anyone’s RADAR, etc…
But it does show that many people are aware of what is going on there and are not happy about it which is something the ‘man’ needs to keep in mind.
Hard to tell in the day to day just how much good information is out & being believed but IMO, it is a sign that things are a changing and that people are paying more attention than in days of yore before the internet.