Colossal celebrity feud reveals a troublesome future for law enforcement

“Collectively, the rise of bot armies challenges the effectiveness and integrity of law enforcement operations in a digital age, requiring an urgent response in terms of technology, coordination, and legal framework.”

How could the recent legal kerfuffle between Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni impact law enforcement in the future?

At first glance, the dueling lawsuits between the celebrities would appear to have absolutely nothing to do with policing. Their claims against each other are a civil matter - this is not a case with any involvement from law enforcement.

But Lively’s lawsuit, which asserts that she is the victim of a massive smear campaign to discredit her, has exposed a consequential detail of how that campaign was allegedly carried out. The A-lister actress contends that Baldoni’s crisis management team employed a company that built a bot army to create negative posts in an attempt to turn public sentiment against her. Baldoni has denied the claims and has filed his own lawsuit in response.

So how exactly does this impact policing?

Bot armies are employed to influence public opinion, which in fact can and will pose multiple challenges for law enforcement, especially in the context of ensuring transparent and accurate public information and discourse.

Here are six specific ways law enforcement organizations can be affected:

1. Misinformation & Disinformation: Bot armies can flood social media with false or misleading information, skewing public perception and creating confusion. Law enforcement agencies could struggle to delineate between genuine public sentiment and manipulated content, leading to misinformed investigations or responses.

2. Election Interference: If bots are used to sway public opinion, especially during election periods, it can undermine democratic processes. Law enforcement may find it difficult to track and counteract such efforts, as they often involve cross-border actors and sophisticated technology that evades detection.

3. Cybercrime: The deployment of bot armies often involves sophisticated cyber tactics that might fall into legal gray areas. Law enforcement may face challenges in determining what constitutes illegal activity (such as harassment, fraud, or conspiracy) and who is responsible when the perpetrators hide behind complex layers of anonymity.

4. Resources & Technology: Combatting the influence of bots requires a significant investment in technology, personnel, and training. Many law enforcement agencies may lack the expertise or resources to detect and mitigate these operations effectively. The evolving nature of bots and AI-driven techniques complicates enforcement, making it a constant game of catch-up.

5. International Jurisdiction: Bot armies can be controlled from anywhere in the world, making it difficult for local law enforcement to track perpetrators or enforce laws across borders. This raises issues related to international cooperation, legal frameworks, and extradition.

6. Public Trust and Confidence: If bot-driven campaigns are exposed, it can erode public trust in law enforcement, as people may feel their legal institutions are being manipulated or aren’t capable of addressing new forms of digital crime. This could further complicate law enforcement efforts to maintain order and enforce laws.

Collectively, the rise of bot armies challenges the effectiveness and integrity of law enforcement operations in a digital age, requiring an urgent response in terms of technology, coordination, and legal framework.

Let’s look at a scenario that could flummox a law enforcement agency. A local woman has gone missing under suspicious circumstances. The woman was last seen leaving work, and the police have launched an investigation to find out what happened. The case garners significant local attention, and people in the community are eager for updates.

However, a coordinated bot army campaign begins targeting the investigation, spreading misinformation, conspiracy theories, and threats about law enforcement’s role in the disappearance. This immediately complicates the investigation and creates public safety risks.

The bot army begins by creating and sharing false rumors online. The bots spread fabricated stories, such as that the woman was last seen with a specific police officer, or that she was involved in illegal activity. The bots flood local social media groups, forums, and news comment sections with these lies, making it difficult for authorities to get accurate information from the public.

These rumors spread quickly, causing confusion among the community and making it harder for the police to focus on credible leads. The bots use sensational headlines and fake news articles to convince people that the police are hiding critical information or mishandling the case.

The bot army then amplifies messages accusing local law enforcement of being ineffective, corrupt, or even involved in the woman’s disappearance. Bots target police officers with coordinated harassment, flooding their social media accounts with threatening messages.

The bots escalate their activity by encouraging real users to act, inspiring them to organize protests and online petitions demanding the resignation of the police chief. These bots create an illusion of widespread public dissent, putting pressure on law enforcement to respond to the fabricated outrage, rather than focusing on the actual investigation.

Next, the bots spread incendiary content designed to inflame tensions in the community. They post inflammatory messages accusing specific officers or local figures of being responsible for the woman’s disappearance, often with calls for retaliation.

In the worst-case scenario, the bots help organize violent protests, where some of the protestors who have been radicalized by the bot campaign engage in vandalism, threats, and even physical attacks on law enforcement personnel or government buildings.

The bots create an overwhelming narrative that the police are either deliberately hiding the truth or incapable of solving the case, eroding public trust in local law enforcement. The bots' campaign is designed to generate widespread distrust in the authorities, creating an environment where potential witnesses are less likely to cooperate with the investigation.

This means that people who might have valuable information about the woman’s disappearance are hesitant to come forward because they believe the police will either cover it up or fail to act. The community becomes polarized, with some siding with the bots' narrative and others trying to support the investigation, but no one can find common ground.

Meanwhile, law enforcement faces significant challenges in identifying the perpetrators behind the bot army. The bots use VPNs and proxy servers to hide their locations, and many of the accounts are not tied to real identities, making it nearly impossible to track down the responsible parties.

As the bot campaign encourages protests and civil unrest, law enforcement must deploy additional resources to manage crowds and prevent escalating violence. Officers are tasked with managing public order while trying to protect the integrity of the investigation. The fear of public backlash, fueled by misinformation, creates a tense environment.

Law enforcement is forced to balance allocating resources not only to the investigation of the woman’s disappearance but also to handling the public fallout, managing the protests, and dealing with social media lies. This spreads their resources thin, making them less effective in both areas.

All of this sounds quite terrible, but it’s also quite possible. I searched for any examples of bots being used against law enforcement and am grateful to report that I could find none. Unfortunately, though, realtime problems like this will become an issue for a law enforcement agency sometime in the future. The unknown is when.

So, for my next article, I will address steps that law enforcement leaders should consider taking for what seems like an inevitable reality in the years to come.

About the Author

George Watson is a communications consultant, freelance writer and an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Redlands. He spent 18 years as a reporter and editor, with focuses on law enforcement and government administration. His work has taken him all across the country and to war-torn places like Kabul, Afghanistan. To read his full bio click here.