By Beatrice Cadet, MSc, Kimberley Kruijver, MSc, and Sico van der Meer, MA.
The original of this article was originally published in THE JOURNAL FOR THE POLICE (HET TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR DE POLITIE) in Dutch language, 2023 (2),available at: https://www.websitevoordepolitie.nl/content/uploads/2023/07/TVDP-2023-2-COMPLEET-4.pdf
Disinformation: It is everywhere on the internet. Particularly on social media, the most bizarre falsehoods are shared and linked to obscure websites. Typically, this is not a matter for the police; after all, we have freedom of speech and can say what we want within certain limits. But what if disinformation leads to criminal activities? By detecting and monitoring disinformation, the police might be able to get early warnings about potential violence.
A well-known example is the Capitol Riot in the United States in January 2021. Spurred by disinformation spread by then-President Donald Trump and his circle, primarily via social media, a large group of people stormed the Capitol building. The goal was to disrupt a parliamentary session in which Joe Biden was to be recognized as the winner of the presidential election. During the storming, five people died, including a police officer, and many were injured, including 138 police officers. In hindsight, it is questionable whether the police were adequately prepared for the riots (Woodruff Swan & Lippman 2021).
Incitement to crime
The Capitol riots are a unique example because the disinformation was spread by the President of the United States himself, claiming that the elections were rigged and encouraging his followers to march to the Capitol. Typically, the perpetrators of incendiary disinformation are different, such as extremist individuals or groups. Online disinformation, nonetheless, regularly leads to violence by inciting people to riot or commit terrorist attacks, for example. It can, however, incite other criminal activities as well, such as enticing people into human trafficking.
Prosecution of people spreading disinformation is very difficult. Often, disinformation spreaders hide behind anonymous websites and social media accounts. And even if they are not anonymous, it turns out to be difficult to tackle them. In the Netherlands, for example, Willem Engel, leader of the action group Viruswaarheid (Virus Truth), was acquitted of incitement by spreading disinformation prior to demonstrations against the COVID-19 policy in January 2023 (Reijmer 2023).
The right to freedom of expression often weighs heavily. But that does not mean that the spread of disinformation does not need police attention. Detecting and monitoring online disinformation could help predict criminal behavior such as violent riots, extremist attacks, large-scale vandalism, or human trafficking. If the police had been better prepared for the storming of the Capitol, to use that example again, the rioters might have caused much less harm.
European Research
In many European countries, police services notice that online disinformation campaigns sometimes precede disturbances. But how exactly online disinformation can be effectively monitored remains a difficult question. With funding from the European Union, an international multi-year research project was started in 2023 to examine whether there are practical possibilities to use online disinformation as a 'predictor' of disturbances. In the VIGILANT project, various European police services, including from Estonia, Greece, and Spain, work together with several research institutes in Europe, including the Dutch research institute, TNO.
The project attempts to develop a software application that allows police services to detect and monitor online disinformation. The application must meet several crucial conditions: monitoring should not cost the police too much manpower, must provide usable and relevant insights for the police, and simultaneously comply with all ethical and legal requirements regarding privacy and other legislation. These are not simple conditions because detecting and monitoring online disinformation by the police involves several serious challenges.
Problems
A first difficult question is how monitoring can take place effectively given the enormous flood of social media content that needs to be analyzed (preferably as quickly as possible to avoid losing relevance). On the one hand, detecting and monitoring online disinformation seems useful to be able to anticipate resulting criminal activities early. But on the other hand, police services usually do not have the manpower to effectively keep up with the enormous volume of online information. This problem can likely be solved by using specially developed software.
An even bigger problem is that monitoring online disinformation by the police can lead to violations of privacy laws when monitoring online expressions of random citizens. This can also affect public opinion about the police; it could, for example, foster distrust, and fuel perceptions of the police as 'Big Brother.' A similar situation occurred when the Royal Netherlands Army began an experiment during the COVID-19 crisis to monitor social media to predict disturbances. This led to uproar, the halting of the experiment, and even an official investigative committee concluding, among others, that the army had violated privacy laws with this approach (Investigative Committee Land Information Manoeuvre Centre 2022). To some extent, one could argue that monitoring citizens' expressions on the internet in the Netherlands can only be a task for the intelligence services AIVD and MIVD. These services are under constant supervision by the Review Committee on the Intelligence and Security Services regarding civil rights and the proportionality of the investigation. This would, however, mean that there is no role for the police in detecting and monitoring disinformation.
This should not be the case, as there are ethical and legal frameworks within which the police can detect and monitor online disinformation without violating privacy, for example, if online information is not viewed at the level of individual internet users but only at the aggregated level (i.e., the big picture of expressions, moods, narratives, etc.). Think, for example, of monitoring aggressive, hate-mongering, and/or inflammatory messages at the level of group forums instead of at the level of individual members of those forums. Carefulness is, of course, an absolute necessity in this regard.
Conclusion
Detecting and monitoring online disinformation can help police services to be better prepared for criminal activities such as riots and violence. But there are some challenges associated with that detection and monitoring. Besides the enormous flood of social media content that needs to be analyzed, there are also legal and ethical dilemmas involved. These problems might be circumvented by developing a software application that monitors online information not at the individual but at the group level and makes predictions about possible upcoming disturbances. This can be part of the solution to the problem that police services in many democratic countries struggle with: how to achieve a healthy balance between safety on the one hand and freedom of expression on the other.
References
Onderzoekscommissie Land Information Manoeuvre Centre (LIMC) (2022). ‘Grondslag Gezocht’, https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2023/01/13/rapportonderzoekscommissiebrouwer-naar-het-landinformation-manoeuvrecentre-limc
Reijmer, L.(2023). ‘Rechter acht slechts 1 van de 6 uitspraken van Viruswaarheid-kopmanWillem Engel strafbaar, vrijspraak voor de overige 5’, De Volkskrant, 20January 2023, https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/rechter-acht-slechts-1-vande-6-uitspraken-vanviruswaarheid-kopmanwillem-engel-strafbaarvrijspraak-voor-deoverige-5~bdf925a0/
VIGILANT (2023). https://www.vigilantproject.eu/
Woodruff Swan, B., & Lippman, D. (2021). ‘New Capitol Police document shows how unprepared they were for Jan. 6 riots’, Politico, 29October, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/29/capitol-policedocuments-unpreparedjan-6-riots-517478