We live in a golden age of data. There is a nearly incalculable quantity of digital information, including from social media, available at the click of a button. This data is valuable to government agencies for investigations, intelligence, regulatory enforcement, fraud detection and risk assessments. Much of this information is available with little more than a social media account at most, which is sometimes taken as license to mine it without restraint.
But unfettered use of even publicly available data by the state may undermine core democratic and human rights values, from the ability to independently develop one’s views to freedom of speech and association to the liberty to form intimate relationships. This information can implicate personal and collective privacy and is susceptible to misuse, abuse and misinterpretation, as Te Aka Matua o te Ture / the New Zealand Law Commission and Te Tāhū o te Ture / Ministry of Justice observed in their landmark report on the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 over half a decade ago. The situation in Aotearoa New Zealand and globally has only become more acute since then. That is the subject of this report.
The report then offers a first-of-its kind compendium of the collection, use and monitoring of information from social media by over a dozen New Zealand public sector entities. Drawing from published policies, media reporting, correspondence and interviews, it reveals some details publicly for the first time, and includes in an appendix two never-before-published forms governing account takeovers by police. And it sets out a catalogue of the potential harms arising from state scrutiny of social media.