RCMP caught using fake Facebook and Twitter accounts to monitor political protesters

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Is Bebop Arooney a Facebook friend of yours?

      If so, you might want to think about ending that relationship. This morning (July 27), the Toronto Star newspaper outed the account as a fake profile created by the RCMP to allegedly monitor activists and protest groups.

      "Through the Facebook page, RCMP agents prodded organizers with seemingly innocuous questions,” writes staff reporter Laurent Bastien Corbeil. “’Will there be food and drinks?’ an officer wrote on the Facebook page for an anti-Novotel union rally in 2012. ‘Cause I am on a fixed student income and will bring some buddies to add to the numbers if we can grab some free food.’”

      Citing documents obtained through a freedom of information request, the Star states the account was used to scrutinize and interact with more than two dozen groups. Those included the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, plus six Jewish and Palestinian groups.

      The Bebop Arooney account in question was created in 2005 and deleted last Thursday, July 23, 2015. According to the Star, it was used as recently as April 13, 2015, when it interacted with a pro-Palestinian group based in Toronto.

      The RCMP confirmed it created the profile in question plus a Twitter account with the handle @angrycitizen123 on which the Star also obtained documents.

      The RCMP admitted it had created both accounts but claimed they were no longer in use.

      “The [Facebook] account mentioned was opened in 2005 for operational reasons, and since that time, the RCMP’s social media practices have changed and evolved and now we used an official media account for such purposes,” the agency said via a spokesperson quoted by the Star. “The Facebook account is historical and no longer relevant.”

      Comments

      11 Comments

      slow clap

      Jul 27, 2015 at 11:22am

      Stay tuned for a Straight exclusive next Tuesday: RMCP "caught" preventing crime.

      Maurice LaMarche

      Jul 27, 2015 at 12:33pm

      It took how long discover that Bebop Arooney was a fake name? Or perhaps the very generic angrycitizen123? Jeez not exactly dealing with rocket scientists over here were we.

      Littering and?

      Jul 27, 2015 at 1:07pm

      So the RCMP was using Facebook to do surveillance? This is news why?

      Anonymous

      Jul 27, 2015 at 1:47pm

      This is not exactly hard hitting news. Obviously law enforcement will use social media accounts to monitor groups. (Oh, anddon't accept friend requests from people you don't know.)

      RealityCheck

      Jul 27, 2015 at 4:39pm

      Ummm....the whole idea of living in a first world western democracy is that the police don't or can't spy on law abiding groups that oppose the government. Or is that too old fashioned a concept for today's dumb technorati to understand?

      Bobbie

      Jul 27, 2015 at 7:02pm

      If the police have reason to suspect "real" danger to the public, then good on them for embracing technology as long as they do not use baited entrapment. BC politicians use Twitter to spread their agenda & send messages to their supporters. Geez, politically neutral Jean Maxton on Twitter got blocked from following the Vancouver School Board recently !

      well

      Jul 27, 2015 at 11:19pm

      its not like sending officers disguised as protesters into the crowd so they can provoke the situation

      Yabbut

      Jul 27, 2015 at 11:57pm

      How odd. Facebook doesn't allow fake names. Even if you're hiding from abusive crazies or stalkers that want to ruin your life.
      Facebook doesn't even care if you get outed as gay due to the real names policy and thrown off a roof in some backwards antigay place. They'll even demand to see photos of your official government identification (some imbeciles even provide it to them).
      Does this mean that someone in the RCMP lied to facebook? oh golly gosh. And does this mean that someone with a facebook account with thousands of friends can't trust each and every friend implicitly? They must be shocked.

      ?

      Jul 28, 2015 at 8:42am

      @RealityCheck, Monitoring facebook is not "spying". If someone is dumb enough to put their crap on fakebook, then they aren't too smart to begin with. Fakebook is voluntarily telling the world stuff the world really isn't interested in.

      @?

      Jul 28, 2015 at 3:53pm

      Monitoring any signal is signals intelligence, which is a part of espionage. It is an open question how much sigint populations want their governments to do inland, both as a question of economic prudence and one of a more abstract concern, re: right to privacy, etc. One might argue that even aggregating together publicly available data breaches the right to privacy, if done by the Government, without specific enabling legislation. General legislation concerning "law enforcement activity" probably shouldn't be taken to empower this sort of activity. And, of course, it is expensive. Perhaps there are more important things to spend money on, rather than intangibles like "security"?

      And, in general, there is quite possibly an expectation that it is immoral to lie and that therefore covert operations, like creating an operational account that doesn't identify the operator as military/police/XYZ, is simply wrong. Perhaps in limited circumstances a case can be made for covert operations, but as part of a general investigation strategy, I don't think reasonable people would find that justified---life isn't some hollywood movie, you know. The idea that I should be compelled to pay taxes that will then be used to conduct espionage against myself is pretty nonsensical---no reasonable person would ever pay to have himself spied on. And our Government does many things like this, things that no reasonable person would ever pay to have done to himself.