by Anthony W. Accurso

The Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) in Washington, D.C., has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to monitor social media activity, targeting protesters and others not suspected of crimes, according to public records obtained through a 2022 lawsuit by the Brennan Center for Justice and Data for Black Lives. The MPD employs services from Babel Street, Dataminr, Sprinklr, and Voyager Labs to track individuals’ online posts, map their social connections, and follow public demonstrations in real time.

These tools—Babel Street, Dataminr, and Sprinklr—enable the MPD to search social media platforms using keywords and extract detailed information. For example, Dataminr provided the MPD with the social media handle, follower count, bio, protest location, and post content of a person sharing plans for a demonstration, records show. Between June 4, 2020, and May 20, 2022, Dataminr sent approximately 160,000 email alerts to the MPD, covering protests related to COVID-19 restrictions, police brutality, and other issues.

Babel Street offers similar capabilities, including “confluence tracking,” which identifies individuals connected to specific events or locations. In 2015, the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (“HSEMA”), a fusion center that includes the MPD, used Babel Street to compile a list of people present at protests against police brutality in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, as well as their online associates who were not physically present at either location.

Sprinklr tracks specific terms across social media. During President Donald J. Trump’s 2017 inauguration, the MPD used Sprinklr to monitor phrases including “#Jointheresistance,” “#ResistTrump,” “#RefuseFacism,” and “#Anticapitalist,” according to documents.

Voyager Labs differs by analyzing social networks to generate “predictions” about individuals or topics. A Voyager brochure highlights its ability to run keyword searches to identify “thought leaders, activists, and ‘disrupters’” and explore their networks. It also claims to pinpoint individuals who “could aid in a criminal investigation” by examining a detainee’s social media connections, flagging those linked to prior law enforcement searches or multiple persons of interest. This approach risks implicating people merely for associating online with someone who has a criminal record, even unknowingly.

Privacy advocates warn that these tools create a “time machine,” storing data indefinitely and linking posts to GPS coordinates, allowing police to revisit information collected for unrelated purposes or no longer publicly available. In Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206 (2018), the Supreme Court ruled that collecting more than seven days of location data from a cellular provider requires a warrant. However, law enforcement agencies, including the MPD, appear to interpret this restriction as inapplicable to data purchased from third-party vendors like those named above.

Public backlash, notably after the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, prompted social media platforms to restrict access to their data streams. Civil liberties groups have since intensified scrutiny of surveillance tools. Voyager Labs, however, claimed it did not rely on platform cooperation, suggesting it harvested data independently—potentially bypassing platform safeguards. This practice led Meta Platforms Inc. to sue Voyager Labs in 2023 for allegedly creating 55,000 fake accounts to scrape data from approximately 1.2 million user profiles. In March 2025, Meta and Voyager reached a settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed, but the lawsuit highlighted ongoing concerns about unauthorized data collection.

The costs of these programs are substantial. Between 2016 and 2020, the D.C. fusion center spent $174,500 on Babel Street access. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, the District’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (“OCTO”) cited the need for enhanced monitoring to justify spending $200,000 on 50 Dataminr licenses, with 45 allocated to HSEMA. In 2018, the MPD paid $47,950 for seven annual Dataminr licenses and $1,100 monthly for another vendor’s software with social media search capabilities. The department also tested Sprinklr’s services for 60 days in 2017, valued at an estimated $40,000, though it remains unclear whether payment was made. As of April 2025, no public records confirm whether the MPD has renewed contracts with these vendors since 2022, but the department’s broader surveillance investments suggest continued reliance on such tools.

In 2024, the MPD expanded its surveillance capabilities with a real-time crime center, integrating data from CCTV cameras, license plate readers, and social media monitoring tools. This center, funded through the District’s 2025 budget with $3.4 million for technology procurement, enhances the MPD’s ability to analyze online activity alongside other data sources. Community groups have proposed legislation requiring D.C. Council approval before agencies spend on surveillance tools, citing risks to privacy and First Amendment rights. No such law has been enacted as of April 2025.

The legality of these tools remains contentious. Critics argue that police should obtain warrants before accessing such detailed personal data, particularly given its scope and permanence. Without stronger legislative oversight, the MPD and other law enforcement agencies are likely to continue investing heavily in these practices, raising questions about mass surveillance, accountability, and resource allocation. At a time when law enforcement budgets face scrutiny, redirecting funds from legally dubious surveillance to community priorities could yield significant savings and public trust.  

Source: Brennancenter.org

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