Traffic Analysis / Masquerading legality?

Cyberscum

I was wondering if anyone is familiar with the laws and regulations that govern public traffic analysis and social media account masquerading. I know that for educational purposes you can have "fake" social media accounts and that under certain circumstances you can monitor, but not log traffic for educational purposes.

But I cannot for the life of me remember the governance. Instead of digging, I thought I might as well ask here first.