Anecdotal examples. Russians have stricter gun control and a lot less guns than Sweden, but their murder rates are more than double compared to the US and 10 times compared to Sweden's. I'm not saying that gun control is good or bad, but a more thoughtful discussion must be had on the issue, than just pointing on the map and saying: "Hey look, this country has tough gun control and low crime rates, hence gun control = low crime rates".
There's what's on the books and what actually happens. If you read Russia's Constitution during the Soviet era, it contained most of the same freedom of speech and other civil liberties guarantees as the U.S. Constitution. But it was just on paper. None of those rights actually existed in practice. By contrast, as flawed as the U.S. system is, you can go into a court and argue that a law violates the First Amendment, or Second Amendment for that matter, and if you can convince a court of that, the law gets struck down.
Also, re the OP, the story seems more than a bit overblown.
No, the Cops Aren’t Banning Protesters From FacebookIt should come as no surprise that police departments monitor social media. After all, as a speaker revealed during a panel at last week’s International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, roughly 96 percent of law enforcement agencies utilize social media, and more than 86 percent for “investigative purposes.”
At least, that’s according to Kenneth Lipp, the Philadelphia-based investigative journalist at the center of what Chicago Police Department Lt. Steven Sesso calls a “headache.”
Since the IACP conference’s closing, Lipp has been posting photos and videos from the event’s panels and showroom floor, along with blog posts highlighting the available police swag and attending heavy-hitters. It was essentially a who’s who of modern law enforcement, the massive conference having filled every bit of the PA Convention Center’s 679,000 square feet for a solid five days.
The headache to which Lt. Sesso refers, though, comes not from any helicopters or armored personnel carriers that were for sale, but a statement from an unnamed, unscheduled speaker from the Chicago Police Department indicating an apparent relationship between the agency and social media giant Facebook. According to Lipp’s original blog post, the nature of that relationship—allegedly built through Facebook’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan—was to “block users’ from the site by account [person], IP, and device … if it is determined they have posted what is deemed criminal content.” Additionally, Sullivan was listed as a speaker for that same panel.
tl;dr the police can read Facebook. Just like anyone else can. And they can click the "report" button.
Just like anyone else can.
