tweeting crime: law enforcement adapts to social media : npr
TRANSCRIPT
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
1/19
Tweeting Crime: Law EnforcementAdapts To Social Media
April 25, 2013 1:00 PM
Listen to the StoryTalk of the Nation 30 min 20 sec
Guests
auri Stevens, founder, LAwS
ommunicationsawn Keating, police specialist,
eal Time Crimes Center
telligence Unit at the Cincinnati
olice Department
eidi Moore, U.S. finance and
conomics editor, The Guardian
The Boston Police Department tweeted photos
of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and
later announced his capture via social media.
As the number of Twitter users grows, policeforces face new opportunities and challenges in
using social media for communicating with the
public.
Copyright 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For
other uses, prior permission required.
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
This is TALKOF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan, in Washington.Last Friday evening the Boston Police Department tweeted the
news that the city and the nation had been waiting for. Captured.
The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over and justice
has won. Suspect in custody.
Over the course of that long week, police and other law
enforcement agencies also used tweets to correct misinformation
that spread on Twitter and other media. Once suspects had been
http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://www.npr.org/programs/talk-of-the-nation/http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://www.npr.org/programs/talk-of-the-nation/http://npr.player.openplayer%28179038258%2C%20179038255%2C%20null%2C%20npr.player.action.play_now%2C%20npr.player.type.story%2C%20%270%27%29/http://www.npr.org/ -
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
2/19
identified, their Twitter and Facebook accounts became part of the
investigation, even an Amazon wish list.
It's hardly the first time law enforcement has used social media, but
it may have been the most watched. So if you work in law
enforcement, how do you use social media? What are the pluses
and minuses? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us,
[email protected]. And yeah, we're on Twitter, talk - TALK OF THE
NATION - talk - what's our Twitter account? Talk - @totn, that's what
it is. I'll get there sooner or later, @totn.
Later in the program, who is your Superman as the Man of Steel
turns 75? Email us with the incarnation that speaks to you. The
address is [email protected]. But first, Twitter and law enforcement. And
of course we begin in Boston, as it happened. Lauri Stevens joins
us from our member station there, WBUR. She trains law
enforcement on social media. She's the founder of LAwS
Communications. It's nice to have you on the program today.
LAURI STEVENS: Thank you, Neal, glad to be here.
CONAN: And let's start with public information. Is Twitter now the
medium of choice for what used to be called a press release?
STEVENS: Oh, I say if it isn't, it's sure going that way. You know,more people are checking Twitter. I know I myself, when I want to
know what's going on, I don't turn on the television anymore. I look
at Twitter. And certainly people did during the bombings.
CONAN: And interesting that the arrest was announced on Twitter.
STEVENS: Absolutely, but not such a surprise given that it's Boston
police. They are - they're not new to social media, and they did a,
you know, really great job of keeping the public informed during that
entire week.
CONAN: And keeping the public informed via Twitter on the
assumption that everybody else in the media was looking at their
Twitter account too.
STEVENS: Oh sure, that's what happens. I mean this is how law
enforcement does what I like to call controlling the virtual scene.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
3/19
You know, whenever anything happens, law enforcement is
involved, a shooting, in this case a bombing, a protest, the earlier
law enforcement can get out there and be part of the conversation
and put out its messages of public safety, the better they're going to
be at making sure things like what happened, you know, the things
that are tweeted by others that are untrue or the rumors, can be put
to rest, and the truth is put out there.
CONAN: This requires an agility that police departments are not
often credited with.
STEVENS: Oh yes, it does. The police departments aren't known
for agility for sure. They - you know, I've heard it said police
departments hate two things, or cops hate two things: change and
the way things are.
(LAUGHTER)
STEVENS: And that's certainly true, I think. But, you know, we're
turning the curve on that, and Boston police did a great job of
leading the way. I think - you know, having said that, I think the
Boston police could be doing a whole lot more with social media.
But they were - did an exemplary job of, you know, getting the
messages out there in a time of crisis, when people really needed
to get them.
CONAN: So can you give us an example of something you thought
worked pretty well?
STEVENS: In the case of last week? Oh, I mean, I think that, you
know, when people were tweeting that an arrest had been made, an
arrest hadn't been made. Or I think especially issues of officer
safety, the Boston police were out there asking the media not to be
broadcasting their location.
They were also trying to send out messages - they were sending
out messages to people to not be broadcasting everything that's on
their scanners. And I think that that - you know, people understood
that they were part of it, and I think many, many people understood
that they needed to dial it back too, and definitely played a part in
doing that. Everybody wanted to cooperate. Everybody wanted to
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
4/19
see those guys caught, and everybody did what they could to do
that, and much to the great leadership of the Boston police.
CONAN: Now, we've seen other occasions where police and social
media have not mixed well.
STEVENS: Oh sure, I have lost count.
(LAUGHTER)
CONAN: Well, perhaps the Dornan manhunt outside of Los Angeles
just last month.
STEVENS: Right, and that - you know, but I can tell you, you know,
those officers out there, I don't know - I don't have intimate
knowledge of, you know, what they were doing, but I can tell you
what they were doing was monitoring and gaining a lot ofintelligence. Were they engaging? Not so much. But they are very
sophisticated as well out on the West Coast in the L.A. area.
CONAN: They also told reporters to stop tweeting.
STEVENS: Yeah, well, good luck with that. And that's - you know,
that's never a good idea. We saw that in the Olympics, you know, in
London. Some of the authorities there wanted to turn off Twitter.
Well, you know, that's not going to happen. And of course the best
thing to do is to use it to your advantage and be proactive and
strategic about it.
CONAN: There was also the case in San Francisco where after -
worried that people would be gathering on subway platforms as part
of a protest, police shut down Twitter.
STEVENS: Yeah, they - well, they shut down the cell phone system.And - but, you know, that's a tough call. And I actually have met the
officer that made that call, and he insists he'd do it again for public
safety. And who wants to be an armchair quarterback on that? My
best bet is with the law enforcement officers.
CONAN: Well, joining us now by phone from Cincinnati is Dawn
Keating, a police specialist with the Real Time Crimes Center
Intelligence Unit at the Cincinnati Police Department. Good of you
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
5/19
to be with us today.
DAWN KEATING: Good afternoon, sir.
CONAN: And can you tell us about a recent investigation where you
used social media to find a suspect?
KEATING: We've had actually multiple incidents. One big thing is
we've had rape cases and burglaries where people were meetingeach other via Facebook and became familiar with each other just
through chats on the Internet. And when they would meet up with
these individuals, the victim would then be either unfortunately a
victim of a rape or robbery, and we were able to backtrack it through
that.
CONAN: So find out the identification of a suspect through their
Facebook or Twitter account?
KEATING: Yes, sir.
CONAN: And are police allowed to walk a virtual beat to try to stop
these things before they happen?
KEATING: Yes, sir. It's no different than you getting onto the Internet
today and logging into Facebook or Twitter or any of the hundreds
of other social media sites out there and viewing what's out there.
CONAN: So there are police officers in Cincinnati even as we speak
trolling Twitter?
KEATING: Yes, sir, we do the best we can here at the Real Time
Crimes Center with monitoring all the different situations, especially
if we have large events coming into Cincinnati or certain crimes that
are occurring; we will take to the Internet.
CONAN: And I wonder, do people contact you with concerns about,
well, feeling that they're being, you know, watched by Big Brother?
KEATING: We've had a few concerns, citizens that thought that,
and I would sit down with them or another individual from our unit
and explained to them really what we do, that it is no different than
them going onto Google and doing a search. We've been able -
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
6/19
very successful in using social media also to show that somebody
was innocent in a crime.
CONAN: And give us an example of that.
KEATING: We've had individuals that were fraudulently taking
money by checks in the downtown business area on multiple
occasions, and the investigator contacted us and asked us to check
the social media. We had the names and locations. Well, we were
able to track the supposed suspect that was actually in Atlanta at
the time that the crimes were happening.
CONAN: So in that case it proved to be - well, investigations you
tend to think of incriminating people, but obviously there's the other
way too.
KEATING: Correct. In this case we were able to prove the personwas innocent, and not what they were being blamed of.
CONAN: And do you keep track of court cases? I know there was a
recent case in which the courts ruled that effectively Twitter was a
public space, there's no expectation of privacy.
KEATING: Yes, sir. I try to monitor the court cases as close as I can
to keep on that for court purposes and the investigations.
CONAN: And how do you think this is going to be changing over the
weeks and months and years to come?
KEATING: I think it's the types of cases that are going to come to
the court's attention. It'll have to be a case-by-case judgment on the
individuals.
CONAN: Well, that's in terms of the courts. What about the policedepartment? What are you anticipating?
KEATING: In the five years I've been doing it, I'm seeing an
increase of law enforcement showing an interest and using it as - it
was stated earlier that police officers don't change. We are very
reluctant to change, especially when it comes to computers and
technology, because most officers want to be out chasing the bad
guys and don't want to be behind the computer looking at things.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
7/19
But we're seeing a lot of officers becoming proactive with that and
wanting to learn the proper way of vetting the information properly
from the Internet.
CONAN: And of course we also know not all the information on the
Internet is entirely accurate.
KEATING: Correct, correct. That's why when you see something on
the Internet, you can't run with it right away. You have to actually
take that information and try to verify it to the best that you can.
CONAN: Lauri Stevens, we were talking earlier about Boston and
here with Dawn Keating from Cincinnati. As you look at those
departments, obviously they have resources that a lot of smaller
police departments don't have.
STEVENS: Absolutely. But I see some really good work being doneby the small departments as well, especially when it comes to
community engagement. There are many, many departments doing
an outstanding job of really just in their day-to-day lives, officers
tweeting or posting on Facebook just what they're doing, the kinds
of work that they're doing and interacting with citizens and really
building relationships.
So, you know, when something bad happens in their town, they'regoing to have the support of those citizens because they've built
those relationships.
CONAN: We'd like to hear from those of you in law enforcement.
How are you using social media? We'd also like to hear from those
of you in the public. Do you have an example of the police
department or law enforcement using social media well or maybe
not so well? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, [email protected].
And Dawn Keating there in Cincinnati, as you look at the
possibilities here, do you consider that this is a force multiplier? Do
you gain from using - the officers involved in Internet investigations
are well-used?
KEATING: Oh yes, and you're going to see it used more and more.
Our officers are - even the beat officers are becoming more familiar
with it every day and how to use it to assist them in their daily
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
8/19
duties.
CONAN: The beat officers, and are they supervised? Does
someone from your department, for example, go back and say,
Officer Smith, this was a good idea, maybe you could have done
this one a little bit differently?
KEATING: Oh, you know, as an officer you tend to do that with a lot
of situations you're in, not just when it comes to social media.
CONAN: And are there - there are also officers who want to have a
private life, including social media, and that's not always, that's not
always, you know, easy to do.
KEATING: This is true, and we do talk to the officers about, you
know, what you post is you may have it marked private, but
somebody out there, if you put it in print, and you don't wantanybody to know about it, it's probably not a good idea to be posting
it.
CONAN: And I just wonder: Do you have a private Facebook
account or a Twitter account?
KEATING: Not private, I do not.
CONAN: Thanks very much. I appreciate your time today. Good
luck to you.
KEATING: Thank you, sir.
CONAN: Dawn Keating is a police specialist with the Real Time
Crimes Center Intelligence Unit in the Cincinnati Police Department.
She joined us today by phone from her office there. And Lauri
Stevens is still with us, she's a social media strategist for lawenforcement.
We'd like to hear from those of you in law enforcement. How do you
use social media? And, well, those of you not in law enforcement,
do you have an example of the police using it well or maybe not so
well? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, [email protected]. Stay
with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR
News.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
9/19
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan. As
technology advances and the reach of social media grows, law
enforcement has had to try to figure out how to handle it in times of
crisis. Just two years ago, it came to a head after a Bay Area
Transit officer shot Oscar Grant in a deadly confrontation on a
subway platform.
Activists planned a demonstration to protest that shooting, and
police, for apparently the first time in the United States' history, shut
down mobile Internet and phone service at four stations to interrupt
communications and thwart the protest. Their strategy worked:
Protests did not materialize. Constitutional scholars cried foul,
though, calling it an unlawful suppression of First Amendment
speech.
If you work in law enforcement, call, tell us, how do you use social
media to do your job? What are the pluses and minuses? Also
those of you in the public, do you have an example of police using
social media well or not so well? 800-989-8255. Email us,
[email protected]. The email address is [email protected]. Click on TALK OF
THE NATION.
Lauri Stevens is social media strategist for law enforcement, with usfrom WBUR, our member station in Boston. And let's go to
Brett(ph), and Brett's on the line with us from Waterford,
Connecticut.
BRETT: Yes, sir.
CONAN: Go ahead, you're on the line.
BRETT: I'm a lieutenant with the Waterford, Connecticut, police
department. We have a Facebook page that we have rolled to a
Twitter account and our web page. So it's a single-source entry for
us. We, you know, we're a smaller community, about 20,000 people,
and our - we have about 2,500 people on our Facebook page.
So for a smaller agency, this is kind of our entry point for - recently
had a blizzard, floods, hurricanes, et cetera. We update our page
constantly through that let people know what roads are closed, if
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
10/19
there's accidents, what areas of town are out of power, et cetera.
CONAN: And when you say they're linked, so that means if you
enter something on the Twitter page, it also shows up on Facebook,
for example?
BRETT: Vice versa, actually. We use Facebook as our entry point,
and we find it easiest to attach photos and do all that. But - and it
goes out from there.
CONAN: And is it interactive? Do you have people contacting you
with information or, well, comments for that matter?
BRETT: Yeah, constantly, every single day.
CONAN: And anything useful?
BRETT: All the time. We post suspect photos of people that see a
lot of our local retail outlets, and, you know, we put their photos up.
We went through the FOI Commission to ask if that was OK. They
said it was. And we solve the majority of our crimes that we post on
Facebook, get solved through public information.
CONAN: FOI, I assume, is freedom of information?
BRETT: Yes, sir.
CONAN: And any concerns about - well again, you're checking with
lawyers, effectively?
BRETT: We did. We did it at the start to ensure that we were within,
you know, our police rights to do this. We've got some information
that, you know, certainly we do not put out to social media, but, you
know, anything that - any prominent arrest, press release, anythingthat we make we put up, and, you know, we're very cognizant of the
arrest laws and the freedom of information laws. So we take the
arrest photos down after a certain amount of time to ensure that
there's no problems with the court process, et cetera.
CONAN: Social media and the news media has had this problem,
too. They seem to put pressure on you to do things faster than you
might have otherwise done. Have you ever put something on the
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
11/19
past and said, you know, in retrospect I wish we hadn't done that
quite so quickly?
BRETT: I would say that at the start, we were doing some things
that, you know, we were a little leery of. But, you know, with the
responses that we've gotten from both the press and the citizenry,
it's fantastic. So, you know, you've got to weigh what you want out
quickly versus what ramifications there may be down the line for
you.
So I can't say that we've put anything out where we've been oh, you
know, darn it, we shouldn't have done that, but it doesn't matter -
you're always good as your latest post. So I can't say that I'm not
going to run into that in the future.
CONAN: Yeah, the same with the news media, too. But thanks very
much for the phone call. Good luck to you.
BRETT: Thanks a lot. Have a good day.
CONAN: And Lauri Stevens, I don't know if you're familiar with the
Waterford, Connecticut, police department system, but is that an
example of something that a smaller force can do?
STEVENS: Oh absolutely, and the key words that the lieutenant
said there to me were this is their entry point. And I think, you know,
what I see everywhere is every agency goes through a process of
comfort and feeling more comfortable with these tools and, you
know, how to use them. And I'm sure we'll see Waterford doing, you
know, more and more as they, you know, free up some resources.
And hopefully we'll see their officers, you know, representing the
department on Twitter and maybe their chief getting in there. And I
liken it to email. You know, 15 years ago, I'm sure the chief looked
around and wondered who they could trust with an email account.
Now - you know, and so it's - to me I think we're going to see more
and more of it being incorporated just into the regular day-to-day
operations for community outreach especially.
CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to Sean(ph), and Sean's on the
line with us from Eugene in Oregon.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
12/19
SEAN: Hey, how are you doing, Neal?
CONAN: Good, thanks.
SEAN: Great. Hey, I just wanted to say that, you know, a couple of
things. One, first, as a police officer, I've been a police officer here
for quite a while, and I've seen other officers get in trouble about
what they post on their Facebook. And right now I know our
department, probably along with a lot of others, is in kind of a gray
area between what they have a right to post or, you know, regarding
freedom of speech and what is sort of an infringement on how
they're portraying their department.
So there's quite a bit of friction right now between where that line
can be.
CONAN: When you say friction, what do you mean exactly?
SEAN: Well, you know, some officers feel like they should be able
to post anything they want and maybe not speak so highly of the
city or where they work. And other - and the department is saying
people know you're a police office. You can't be saying certain
things and expressing certain - you know, being too disgruntled
because people know where you work. So there's really no - I
guess there's no question about who they're speaking of.
CONAN: I see, so it's a concern about exposure, too.
SEAN: Yeah, exactly, and just I guess overall making the
department look bad and griping and stuff like that. And, you know,
our department is trying to figure out where that line is between
what they have a right to say and what they shouldn't be saying per
our policy, speaking poorly of the department and basically very
disparagingly.
CONAN: All right, interesting. Thanks very much, Sean, appreciate
it.
SEAN: All right, take care, thank you.
CONAN: So long. Here's an email we have, this from a listeners
called W: One important component in the Boston Twitter quote-
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
13/19
unquote reporting was info from the police scanner being passed
along via tweets. Now there are those using social media to their
advantage, force multiplication, and others closing down. Why and
what advantages or disadvantages from the point of view? Lauri
Stevens, I wonder if you could help us there.
STEVENS: Well, the disadvantage to the police obviously are every
move they make is being broadcast out there. And, you know,
they're talking about some real intricate details, and they don't
necessarily want the world to know exactly where their men are and
exactly what they're doing and when they're doing it.
And so I think we've probably going to see something happen in
that regard, with regard to encryption or something. I mean, I'm not
an expert in that area at all, but I think...
CONAN: So it's encrypted radio.
STEVENS: I think it's a huge officer safety issue.
CONAN: Encrypted radio messages that can...
STEVENS: Something. Again, I don't pretend to have that kind of
knowledge, but I think that, you know, not only the success of the
operation but officer safety is of paramount importance, and I think
that we're going to see a lot of, you know, improvement in that area.
CONAN: Get one more caller in, let's go to Sean(ph), Sean's on the
line with us from Portland.
SEAN: Hi, yeah, so I had an interesting experience with social
media recently in that I'm an actor and a writer, and I have been
attached to a Web series that's shooting in Portland. And as part of
our kind of marketing campaign, the Web series has to do with, you
know, this kind of false civil war in the United States. And as part of
the marketing campaign, I was writing about the tree of liberty being
refreshed by the, you know, the sacrifice and blood of patriots and
all this and all that.
CONAN: That line from Thomas Jefferson, I think, yes.
SEAN: Correct, correct. And literally an hour after I posted that, the
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
14/19
Boston Marathon bombing happened. And it was interesting
because after the bombing happened, you know, I was a little
concerned, and I thought maybe I should take the post down, but I
ended up leaving it up. It was part of a marketing campaign. I didn't
think about it.
And literally on Tuesday morning, I got a call from the local FBI field
office wanting to know if I had any information regarding the
bombing in Boston.
CONAN: Interesting, so this was viewed as suspicious, so
somebody was there watching an awful lot of postings.
SEAN: Right, exactly. And, you know, to be honest, I hadn't really
thought about - I hadn't really thought about Facebook being used
very heavily for something like that. You know, I know it's always the
public concern, but, you know, what I don't know is if anacquaintance of mine or a friend of a friend saw that and got
concerned and called the FBI, or if the FBI was actually monitoring
it.
CONAN: Any idea there, Lauri Stevens, this walking I guess part of
the virtual beat?
STEVENS: Oh yeah, my - more than just a guess here, I'm surethat it was being monitored by the FBI and other law enforcement
agencies. There's tools out there, some that are made specifically
for law enforcement to just monitor - in the aggregate, not looking
for any one person or, you know, just looking for illegal activity. And
I'm sure that there must have been a magic word in that tweet that
caught somebody's attention, and they took a look at it.
CONAN: All right. Sean, good luck with the marketing campaign.
(LAUGHTER)
SEAN: Thank you.
CONAN: It's interesting, because obviously, the medium is used for
so many different things: personal communications, marketing
campaigns and, obviously, these police and public information
purposes, as well. Here's an email we have from William in
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
15/19
Anchorage: As a community patrol member, I've used the following:
My Tracks, Glympse, Waze, Evernote. Twitter is fine, but location
tracking and multimedia notes describe and define local
circumstance. Notes may be inserted in geographic display,
location, time and position. In other words, people using GPS, I
guess, Lauri Stevens.
STEVENS: I'm not sure I understood all of those platforms that he
was mentioning. But if he's speaking about geolocation, certainly,
there - by default, your tweets have locations on them. And so if you
don't want your latitude and longitude going out with every single
tweet, you need to put - in your settings, you need to turn that off.
And so that's the other thing, is that there's a - the jury's out on just
what percentage of tweets are really - have this data still attached
to them.
It's not a huge number, but I think it's in the - the experts I talk to say
20, 25 percent of tweets may have geolocation data on them. And
so, you know, law enforcement can use that to prove that
somebody was where they were or weren't, but they can also get
witnesses that way if they can see, you know, tweets that came,
you know, near a time or near in location to where something
happened.
CONAN: Well, Lauri Stevens, thanks very much for your time today.Appreciate it.
STEVENS: Thank you very much, Neal.
CONAN: Lauri Stevens is a social media strategist for law
enforcement, founder of LAwS Communications. She joined us
today from our member station WBUR, in Boston. You're listening to
TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News. And now to anotherTwitter-related event. On Tuesday, The Associated Press' Twitter
feed was hacked, leading to a tweet that falsely reported two
explosions at the White House, one of which injured the president.
Those 140 characters triggered a cascade of effects on Wall Street.
Algorithms that read tweets set off automatic trades, causing what's
called a flash crash of the market. Heidi Moore is here to talk with
us about it. She's The Guardian's U.S. finance and economics
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
16/19
editor, and joins us now from our bureau in New York. Good of you
to be with us today.
HEIDI MOORE: Glad to be here. Thank you.
CONAN: So what happened after that fake tweet was posted?
MOORE: Well, there are a lot of theories. There are a lot of these
flash crashes in the market. Of course, since this is Twitter, it hasother names, like the Twitter Skitter, or the hash crash. But a lot of
the time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average does respond, and the
stock market does respond to what's happening in news, or some
algorithm goes wrong and it crashes. So we can only piece what
happened a little inexactly. But what people believe happened - one
theory, at least - is that this errant tweet went out from The
Associated Press' Twitter account, and it said, falsely, that there had
been an explosion at the White House, and the president wasinjured.
This is false. That was not true. And so that tweet went out. It did
not go out on The Associated Press' usual service, which goes only
to news organizations. So this went out on Twitter, where anyone
can read it. And then, 15 seconds later, the market started to crash.
You saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall 143 points. You saw
the S&P 500 fall. There were other market indices that fell. And theywould naturally respond to news of, you know, bad news, bombing,
explosions, all of that.
So the theory is that what happened is not exactly that the tweet
was loaded into some computer and people started - and
computers started trading on it. The theory is that one person or a
few people saw the tweet, panicked, started selling, and then a lot
of these computer programs or algorithms that scan the market foractivity saw a lot of people selling, and then added more selling to
it. And then that caused the crash.
CONAN: So it became a cascade, or an avalanche.
MOORE: Exactly. But all of that took three minutes. It was back in
three minutes.
(LAUGHTER)
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
17/19
CONAN: And once the thing was over, the market responded, oh,
no problem. But I wonder, in the course of that event, did anybody
make or lose a lot of money?
MOORE: Well, you know, off the Dow Jones Industrial Average,
they probably lost something like $136 billion, which is real money,
even on Wall Street. But the question of whether anyone actually
lost money permanently, I think, is not only unanswerable, but is
also questionable. I mean, the market rebounded. It's doing fine
now. So even if they lose money for a little bit, they certainly got it
back.
CONAN: So what's the lesson of this?
MOORE: Well, the lesson of this is that we do have to be careful
about computers in the market. At least that's what a lot of people
say. The way that a lot of news feeds into the market - as you know,the market is an emotional being. It's not, you know, this - you look
at a stock market board, and it has all these red and green
numbers, and it looks very official and scientific. But all of those
numbers just indicate various emotions, positive and negative
emotions about a company or a stock.
So when Twitter goes into the market, all it does is add to that
emotion. It adds news to that emotion. So, generally, Wall Streethas been depending on Twitter for news since 2009. There's a
company called StreamBase that takes tweets and makes them into
computer code, and then adds a sentiment analysis - so whether it's
positive or negative, usually on the scale of 100. And then all of
those numbers and codes are sent to Wall Street trading firms, and
they scan those for what's going - you know, what's happening in
the world, what's happening in the news.
But a lot of those computers that are programmed by humans, but
don't respond right away to human directions can often go amok,
can often run amok, as they did here. So a lot of people are saying
this is a good example of why we need to look more closely at
those computer programs that move billions of dollars and govern
how well they read news, and also maybe increase the amount of
human intervention between, you know, stock trades and the
market, and not just depend on computers to do it all.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
18/19
CONAN: And briefly, any word on the investigation as to who
hacked the AP account and who sent out that false message?
MOORE: Well, the, quote-unquote, "Syrian Electronic Army" has
taken credit, and I think right now, several agencies are
investigating that claim. But we don't have any other candidates for
the time being, as far as I know.
CONAN: The Syrian Electronic Army? Do we know who they are?
MOORE: We don't know who they are, but they have hacked other
news accounts on Twitter. Of course, you know, Twitter, you just
make up your own password, whether you're a news company or a
person. So they've also hacked the BBC and other accounts. And I
believe the idea is that they are trying to bring attention to what's
happening in Syria.
CONAN: Interesting. OK. Well, thanks very much. And by the way,
the emotional state of the market today, apparently pretty good, up
71 points, the Dow Industrial average, at last glance. Heidi Moore,
thanks very much for your time.
MOORE: Thank you.
CONAN: Heidi Moore is The Guardian's U. S. finance and
economics editor. She joined us from our bureau in New York.
Coming up next on TALK OF THE NATION, we're going to be
talking with Glen Weldon about his new book, the unauthorized
biography of Superman, who turned 75 years old last week - born
on Krypton, of course. But which Superman speaks to you? Give us
a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: [email protected]. Stay with us. I'm Neal
Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.
Copyright 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein
may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for
personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires
NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and
availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised
in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the
audio.
-
7/27/2019 Tweeting Crime: Law Enforcement Adapts to Social Media : NPR
19/19
013 NPR