LAPD officers told to collect social media data on every civilian they stop
I'm a little confused by the framing of this article, because LAPD actually can'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'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've lost cases over it. Even with suspicion, it'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'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't cooperate with requests like these.