LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop
I&#x27;m a little confused by the framing of this article, because LAPD actually can&#x27;t demand the social media information of everyone they stop. They can ask, and it is problematic that they do since many of the people they stop won&#x27;t realize that they can simply decline, but the police have basically no authority in the general case to require it.<p>Without individualized suspicion, the police can barely even ask for ID. They&#x27;ve lost cases over it. Even with suspicion, it&#x27;s unlikely that they can forcefully demand social media information. (They can, with sufficient evidence, arrest you and conduct a search of your person to try to uncover it, but arrests are a big deal; they can&#x27;t dragnet arrest.)<p>With that in mind, I assume the productive article to write here is the one framed around informing people that they shouldn&#x27;t cooperate with requests like these.