This week, the Cyberlaw Clinic filed an amicus brief before the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (“SJC”) in Commonwealth v. Rodriguez (SJC-13727). The Clinic represented the Innocence Project, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, and independent researcher Dr. Isadora Borges Monroy. The brief supports defendant-appellee Nathaniel Rodriguez, who objects to the Lowell Police Department’s use of racially-targeted police investigatory techniques on social media platforms. Building on last year’s filing in Commonwealth v. Dilworth, amici highlight the Equal Protection concerns raised by social media surveillance and underscore its disproportionate impact on minority communities.
This case arises out of the Lowell Police Department’s (“LDP”) practice of creating fake Snapchat accounts to surreptitiously surveil the citizens of Lowell. Here, an LPD Detective established a Snapchat that had a nonwhite username and bitmoji, or avatar. He used that account to befriend Mr. Rodriguez despite lacking any suspicion that Mr. Rodriguez was involved in criminal activity. Later, Mr. Rodriguez posted a Snapchat story of himself with a firearm, which the Lowell detective saw and ultimately leveraged to support a weapons charge against him. Mr. Rodriguez now seeks to suppress the Snapchat story on the ground that the surveillance was conducted, at least in part, because of his race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The trial court disagreed, relying on the fact that the detective had not known Mr. Rodriguez’s race when he befriended his Snapchat. Mr. Rodriguez appealed to the SJC.
On January 24, 2025, the SJC solicited amicus briefs regarding whether a police officer’s Snapchat “friending” of a defendant raised a sufficient inference of selective enforcement in violation of the Equal Protection rights pursuant to the test established in Commonwealth v. Long, 485 Mass. 711 (2020).
In the brief, amici argue that the use of a nonwhite name and Snapchat bitmoji by the LPD satisfied the Mr. Roriguez’s burden of establishing a reasonable inference of impermissible racial targeting and, thus, a violation of his right to Equal Protection. Amici explain that, although the LPD detective conducting this invasive online surveillance claimed to not have knowledge of Mr. Rodriguez’s race, the mere fact that he elected to create a nonwhite profile satisfied the intent-to-discriminate requirement that creates the bedrock of Equal Protection Doctrine. Amici also stress the importance of scrutiny over online investigatory techniques. Online platforms facilitate community-building for marginalized communities, and law enforcement intrusion into such online spaces effectuates clear harms on communities of color. Not only do these online investigatory techniques replicate the harms of in-person profiling and increase the risk of wrongful convictions, but they multiply the potential for these harms by allowing officers to target numerous individuals simultaneously at low cost.
Spring 2025 Cyberlaw Clinic students Tori Borlase, Nico Moscoso, and Divya Vatsa worked on the brief alongside attorneys from the Innocence Project and the Center on Privacy & Technology and Dr. Borges Monroy. The students were supervised by Clinical Instructor Mason Kortz. The Clinic looks forward to SJC’s decision in this case.