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A social media monitoring company allowed campus police to surveil student protests, The Dallas Morning News reported.
The newspaper investigated Social Sentinel, which has since been renamed Navigate360, for many months with the help of the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and the investigative reporting program at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Through interviews and documents, the reporting team found that colleges have used the service to monitor students on social media.
For example, Kennesaw State University campus police used the tool to follow student protesters online before a 2017 town hall. Other emails show Social Sentinel representatives pitched officials at North Carolina A&T State University on using the service to monitor social media chatter after a cheerleader said she was raped and accused her coaches of failing to report the allegation.
“The investigation shows that, despite publicly saying its service was not a surveillance tool, Social Sentinel representatives promoted the tool to universities for ‘mitigating’ and ‘forestalling’ protests,” the article says. “The documents also show the company has been moving in a new and potentially more invasive direction—allowing schools to monitor student emails on university accounts.”
The company said the investigation was “inaccurate, speculative or by opinion in many instances and significantly outdated,” according to the article.
