Photo: Twitter
The Los Angeles Police Department worked with a Polish “strategic communications” firm last year to track tweets related to Black Lives Matter and “defund the police,” according to documents obtained via a public records request by The Brennan Center.
The LAPD conducted a month-long trial of social media monitoring with Edge NPD, a company based in Warsaw, Poland.
The fall 2020 trial period included tracking 200 keywords and resulted in the collection of millions of tweets, including thousands related to Black Lives Matter and the movement to defund the police.
Edge NPD previously had no experience working with law enforcement.
The company’s CEO, Dobromir Cias, told The Guardian the LAPD wanted to respond to “negative narratives” during the height of nation’s reckoning with racism and police violence, while flagging potential threats.
The trial was offered to the LAPD at no charge and was supposed to serve as a “demonstration” of the monitoring technology, but was not intended to monitor specific Black Lives Matter activists, Cias said. Read more.
Milton, are you denying or finding it insignificant that the TPLF attacked a federal army base...
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