A federal judge ordered police officers in Memphis, Tennessee, to be trained on the do’s and don’ts of monitoring social media after the department admitted to creating a fake Facebook page to spy on Black Lives Matter activists.
An account with the alias “Bob Smith” was used by the department to infiltrate the group by becoming Facebook friends with activists who campaign against violence toward blacks. The judge found the practice was a violation of a 40-year-old court agreement barring the city’s police from collecting political intelligence on activists exercising their free-speech rights.