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Cops Walking the MySpace Beat
theodp writes "Meet the point-and-click police. Newsweek reports that a growing number of ordinary officers are working a new beat, turning to MySpace to collect clues and crack offline cases. Most of the nabbed wrongdoers have been victims of their own hubris, like the two boys who uploaded video of themselves firebombing an abandoned airplane hangar earlier this month."
Most of the nabbed wrongdoers have been victims of their own hubris, like the two boys who uploaded video of themselves firebombing an abandoned airplane hangar earlier this month.
I was thoroughly disappointed when I clicked that link and saw that there was no video after the site had loaded.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Seems like MySpace will not only help cops, but give fodder to Jay Leno's idiot criminals skit or people producing books like The World's Dumbest Criminals .
Only a dumb ass would post things on the internet.
I behave as though anything I do on the internet will be recorded and saved forever. I'd rather not have to explain something I posted today to a potential employer twenty years from now. Ditto for some nutcase prosecuter with a creative theory about how I caused the war in Viet Nam (I'm exagerating for emphasis).
By now everyone should be wise enough not to post every single piece of information about them anywhere online, let alone in one place. Parents should be more diligent not with monitoring every single thing their kids do on the computer, but educating them what's ok and not ok to do on the Internet. Am I the only one getting tired of all this MySpace business? On the bright side I was amused reading TFA and seeing how these people were done in by their own sheer stupidity.
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
This has been going on for awhile, but primarily on Facebook to my knowledge. According to Wikipedia, Facebook has been used in numerous investigations, including one last year at my university to catch students who rushed the field. Students had set up groups saying that they had rushed the field, and the police matched pictures from security cameras to student pictures. At least several of them were kicked out of school. Needless to say, this caused quite a scene on campus, but really, what do you expect when you put the information online yourself?
If they were installing hidden cameras, taping phones, or installing keyloggers without cause, I really don't see the problems. If you can get a heads up about someone robbing a house tomorrow night because they were stupid enough to post it on MySpace, why should that be considered protected?
If someone painted a sign saying "I've stolen three cars from this street!" and wore it on said street, is there any reason the cops can't at least stop and question him (even if he denies anything vocally) and check up on him later?
As far as legal requirements for police goes, there's a "Plain View" clause (I'm sure there's a Latin term for it.) For the few who may not understand, it basically says that if the item is in plain view, it can be used. If the cops respond to a noise complaint at your house, look past you into the home, and see a meth lab, they can use that. They may not be able to bust in right away to arrest you (varies by state and circumstance), but they can call up a warrant PDQ. If they pushed their way into the house without cause, or just shoved you to the side to see it, it would most likely be inadmissable.
In the case of the meth lab and the robbery, both are due to horrible stupidity on the perpetrator's part, and there really is no reason they should be protected because of it. If the cop is stalking someone on their MySpace page because s/he doesn't like their choice in music, and wants to make sure they don't decide to steal a CD of it or something, then we might have cause for worry, but this is more likely something done by the common public than by the police, who hopefully are out catching badies and don't have enough time to track every movement on MySpace.
Now, as far as some smaller things go, like stealing CDs or smoking MJ, they can't just take the MySpace page and present that as conclusive evidence; they'd have to get other evidence (like the CD or MJ itself) to prosecute. Could it be enough for a warrant for the other evidence? Maybe. I think that's a legal battle that will come up, because you can't be sure if they actually did it or they're (erronously) trying to look cool for their interweb friends by posting it.
As with much of the internet (which has brought on a lot of problems really fast,) the law is still trying to catch up, and things like MySpace, LiveJournal, and perhaps even sites like Slashdot and Fark could play a role in some big trials in the next 5 or 10 years, especially how global information is received and used in criminal cases.
I guess it does fall under the free information clause, but IMVHO I don't think anything found on there should be admissable. After all, how hard is it to falsify a myspace account?
If you're dumb enough to post incriminating material on the internets you deserve to get caught.
Next time in the land of the SIMs...I mean MySpace.
yes, there should be and probably will be more than enough investigation into tips/leads found there BUT you know there will be enough bored teenagers and even some others trying to "frame" the more/less popular kids and school yard rivals, that whole libel/slander/romour mill thing.
Sure there's a chance of a good hit once in a while, just watch out for the false positive. Especially all those energetic prosecutors wanting to make a name for themselves even at the cost of a questionable guilty verdict and an innocent kid's freedom.
Near worst case, but possible
F7 doesn't work, ignore spelling and grammar
If you're sad enough to not realize the implications of making the wrong that you caused publicly viewable, you deserve whatever punishment received.
Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- A workout plan that doesn't feel like homework.
So you're suggesting that my recent investment in the social networking sites BankHeistSpace.com and WillTradeKiddiePornVids.net is a bad move?
I dont have a MySpace account because it's frequented by scenesters and goths who have no real other method of networking. The real nerds use IRC and multiplayer games to network, and do it quite successfully. A lot of my friends from college have Myspace accounts because they're trendy and you can get hooked up with people really easily on there. One of my friends solicits hook-ups on there. There's nothing wrong with it, but I'm not enough of a scenester to want to use that place. If I'm really hard-up for a date or some companionship, I could always join a social club like my dad did. I just dont belong to the same cultural set that produced the Myspace movement. I hang out with them though.
SRSLY.
Maybe forgotten, but that's part of what police work is about. You walk the beat, get to know the population, learn the patterns, and when something happens you probably have some idea already of where to look or who to talk to. It's the whole idea behind having regular community / school / campus officers rather than having patrols by whatever unit happens to be around.
Having been on the inside of digital police work, we should be damn happy that people leak information and hubris, and are generally clueless as far as digital security is concerned. People get caught through their own sloppyness and boasting, and hours of hard work from officers, rather than from the police being particularly technologically advanced. The referenced article is another example of this: regular officers spending time going through lots of potential evidence rather than advanced technoly.
Back in 1999 or 2000, Audi brought back the S-series of cars in the USA with a performance version of the A4 sedan- the S4. It was a twin-turbocharged V6, and it was faster than the BMW M3- the yardstick at the time. As with many turbocharged cars, manufacturers don't push the limits of these engines for a lot of different reasons; insurance categories, "gentleman's agreements" on speeds or horsepower levels, reliability, stepping on other model lines, room for "improvement" in next year's model, etc. There's plenty of room for a "tuner" to release revised "chips" (tables used for fuel, timing, and boost pressure levels stored in [E/EE/P]ROM memory) that increase horsepower levels. The S4 biturbo reliably makes slightly over 300HP with a chip (from 250); my '91 Audi makes almost 280 (from 217. And it has done so for about 100,000 miles with no problems. It was chipped at 110,000 miles, so yes, some chips are perfectly fine.)
Chip makers pushed the limits to offer the "best" chips- or did shoddy testing, rushing development, to be first-to-market. A few of the chips could overspin the turbos, and a couple people grenaded them.
Dealers were wise to "chips" and would look for them if a car with damaged turbos came in (and Audi implemented various controls to make ECU-swapping much more difficult, but they've all been circumvented.) US warranty law prohibits them from blaming a failure on an aftermarket component unless they can prove reasonably that the changed component caused the failure; a chip is a pretty damn clear-cut case. So these kids (and many of them were in fact kids- rich off internet dot-coms, or mummy and daddy) would borrow a friend's stock ECU, put it in the car, and have it towed to the dealer and say "gee, I dunno what happened."
Then the geniuses would go on Audiworld and brag about how they "tricked the dealer", complete with thumbs-up and grinning smiley icons, people congradulating them, etc. Someone at Audi Client Relations noticed (or was tipped off by people pissed at the scam), and ACR started surfing the forum regularly looking for fraud, and -completely- voiding the warranties of those they could find and in some cases going after owners for the cost of repairs, and postings in forums were cited as evidence. I don't remember if anyone was sued or not- I believe a few were.
That wasn't shocking; what was shocking was the reaction from the Audiworld users. They were absolutely livid that Audi Client Relations DARED to "snoop" on "their" forum.
It's not just the Internet- it has been my personal experience that few people take responsibility for their actions and many are infuriated when someone catches them doing something wrong, instead of being ashamed.
Please help metamoderate.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Now, how would you feel if every square inch of this public space was being constantly monitored by closed-circuit cameras whose feeds are reviewed by police officers?
If it were the government setting up the cameras or website, I'd say that you'd have a dead-spot analogy.
However, this is more like someone else setting up the cameras, and the police just using them. Say, a mall installs cameras to satisfy those worried about safety. The cops think that someone is in the mall that they are looking for, or that someone might attempt to steal something, so they ask the mall guys "Hey, can we use your cameras?"
Well, the mall guys sure wouldn't hate the idea of having two cruisers parked in front of their mall; it would give regular citizens a more secure feeling because of the (apparent) police prescense. Plus, if the mall needs help, they could say "Hey, cops, we helped you here, mind giving us a minute?" It's the mall's property, so the only way that the customers could have any say is if they were able to succesfully picket or boycott to have the cameras removed (which is probably unlikely).
In any case, the cameras are already installed. The people at the mall are told the cameras are installed. Anyone that doesn't want to be on a camera doesn't have to go to the mall. And with the cruisers outside, a regular person could figure out that they might be looking at tapes or live camera feed.
In the same way, MySpace is a private company, it's already set up, and it's already there for the taking. Anyone who posts to MySpace (or LiveJournal, or Facebook) knows that millions of anonymous people on the internet can see their entries (unless they choose the privacy options). If they don't want people looking, they'll not make a public account.
And, in the same way, making this kind of thing public is helpful to MySpace- less parents will be worried about their child using it, and most regular users will have a better feeling that someone is trying to keep them safe.
Now, if the mall (or MySpace) was the only location in a given range to get a component necessary for life, then we could worry about the private/public fiasco.
Working the private/public part of this discussion, think about someone hanging a sign in the window of their (private) apartment saying that they murdered someone. Again, this is plain sight stuff, open to the public. Anyone can see it. There cannot be a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Here's an LA Times article from a paranoid MySpace Mom who spies on her daughter for fear of those pedophiles the idiot box keeps talking about. Best parts are the Mom doesn't understand private profiles, and asks her friends about the site before looking at it herself. And then she bans her daughter from the one form of Internet activity she can easily track. Now her daughter is banned from MySpace but we're all sure she won't be using IM and web-mail, right?
So Barney Fife and Roscoe P. Coltrain if you're listening...some of us are watching.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Well, crap. Now I gotta go change my MySpace profile. Are the cops checking Blogger, too? I hope not. What's the usual sentence for third-degree yoinking and aggravated shenanigans?
He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing.
Good question; I'm sure there's at least one brit who posts to this site; let's ask them how it feels.
No need to worry though; as long as you have the bases covered:
/. IP Hashes on a regular basis (I've been told /. does; but I have no first hand idea how often or even or not if that's true).
1)Don't do anything wrong
2)Make sure your computer isn't broadcasting an IP (I hear there are sites that can help you with that)
3)Cmdr Taco dumps all of the MD5ed
http://dumbcrooks.com/
You don't have to fork out for the book if you don't want to.
And I got the ref from
http://www.darwinawards.com/
But people who get a darwin award are unlikely to blog about it.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
If you confess to a crime in a public place, then yes, the cops have every right to open a case against you.
This isn't rocket science, nor an infringment of your rights. It's simply common sense.
Myspace is like walmart ( only I'd rather visit a walmart than myspace ). If you walk into walmart, and say in a loud voice over and over again how you had sex with an underage child, you can bet your ass you will be investigated. To do anything otherwise would be incomptence on the part of the cops.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I do not feel the least bit threatened by this at all.
This is just yet another reason why I refuse to get a MySpace account. People need to learn their lesson that whatever they post on the Internet is public. Even if it's labelled "private", it's still public. MySpacers have the "look at my page now" attitude whenever it comes to their friends, but when it's someone they don't like, it's a "get away from me, you're trespassing on my privacy" attitude.
As for police investigations, I'm all for it. Personally I'm sick of people posting illegal material on their MySpace, glorifying it, and getting the respect of every other junkie who is lucky enough to see it. Illegal things should be investigated and prosecuted.
As for the legality of searching on MySpace, I pull up this quote from my government textbook (Government By The People, by Burns). I hope it's relevant: "Police may make warrantless searches in public places if the offers have probable cause, or at least a reasonable suspicion, that the persons in question have committed or are about to committ crimes. No later than two days after making such an arrest the police must take the arrested person to a magistrate so that the magistrate, not just the police, can decide whether probable cause existed to justify the warrantless arrest. Probable cause however does not except in extreme emergencies justify a warrantless arrest of people in their own homes...Not every time the police stop a person to ask questions or to seek that person's consent to search is there seizure or detention requiring probable cause or warrant. If the police just ask questions or even seek consent to search an individuals person or possessions in a noncoercive atmoshpere, there is no detention".
Once the average person realizes that everyone watches everything on the Internet, then we won't have problems like this. The amount of information one can glean on someone or about a certain event through MySpace and through various search engines is astounding. But most people don't have the common sense to know that.
Do not mark in this space. For official office use only.
Maybe it should just be "Don't do the crime"?
Solves all these problems.
This is no different than any other cop going undercover to bust a car theft ring or the mob. As long as they do not encourage others to act in a criminal manner or partake in criminal behavior themselves then I see nothing wring with this.
You can't have it both ways - either the cops can follow up on evidence found on the 'beat' (public space, [MySpace|street]), or they can't.
If that was what they were doing - you'd have a point. But it's not. In the case of the TFA, they merely did in virtual space what they'd do in meatspace - examine the evidence and look for clues and/or holes in people's stories. In the instance of scanning MySpace for pedophiles (or idiots who firebomb buildings and brag of it), that's the internet equivalent of pulling over the driver who is weaving all over the road.In my case, absolutely none. Not because I haven't posted anything - but because I haven't done anything.It's called investigation and evidence - something the cops and educated people are aware of, and fearmongering slashdot posters seem not to be.It only fails to be different to the fearmongers."Hey, you're supposed to be working, what are you doing browsing profiles of 16 year old girls on MySpace?"
"I...er...I'm...um...I'm looking into possible crimes that these teenagers may have committed. Right. That's what I'm doing."
If you're going to do something illegal, don't tape it, don't take pictures of it, don't write about it, and most of all...don't post it on the internet. Does common sense even exist anymore?
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
I have talked publicly about doing unususal things. My friends and I used to talk about the best way to dispose of a body while looking around the sporting goods section of Wally World. Does that mean a cop can begin an investigation?
If he has reason to think you are actualy looking to dispose of a body, yes.
What if he finds a body nearby that was disposed of in a creative manner with no other evidence? What would the trial be like? Just because they heard me talking about body disposal and they found a body, does that mean I'm guilty?
That's what investigations and trials are all about. Why is it that any time there is discussion about anything law enforcement does people assume they're going to be convicted and sentenced to life on one piece of circumstancial evidence.
BTW, if you do ever get convicted on one piece of circumstancial evidence, sue your lawyer.
Here's another example: Lets say I'm unpopular in school. To boost my reputation, I decide to blog about how I burned down a house. I got most of the details from $local_news and just made the rest up.
Now, they always leave out details. Let'say I fill in $accelerant from last month's CSI. Just so happens that the real criminal got the idea from the same place.
They have your claim, they have you knowing an unpublished detail. Will I be convicted?
Again, please see investigation and trial by jury for more information as to how the criminal justice system works.
What if I have a pic of me testing a gravity bong with tobacco. Should my school (assuming I'm at least 18) be able to suspend me?
Again see investigation and trial by jury.
What about if I post a chat log of me talking about BSDM with a 14yo girl? Just because there is text containing the claim that she is 14 does not, in fact, mean that she is 14...or even a girl. Should that open the door for a child-sex investigation?
Um yes.
Who is to say that my blog is not a work of fiction?
If it is, that would be revealed in the investigation.
Do cops troll Hollywood movies looking for people discharging firearms within city limits?
Then why should they troll MySpace looking for, and opening investigations on, stuff that may or may not be true?
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here but if you're saying what I think you're saying, you realize that movies have to get permits for that right? As for the investiations thing, it's because it may be true. Isn't that the job of cops, to investigate?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
1)Don't do anything wrong
But there's no way to know what will be considered 'wrong' in the future, which was one of the main points of the parent post. Some future American cultural revolution may decide that some perfectly acceptable activity right now is actually everything that's wrong with the country, so let's go detain/summarily-execute everyone we have logs of doing it...
Erm. no. that won't happen in the US. We have very strongly worded anti "ex post facto law" in the constitution. I sincerely doubt that an ammendment to repeal that provision would ever pass.
We also supposedly have very strong "trial by jury" laws, warrant laws, etc... We can see how well those are currently working out for us now that the OMG TERRISTS have 90% of our population shitting themselves whenever a truck backfires.
What? There's a constitutional right to MySpace privacy? This ought to be good.
I have talked publicly about doing unususal things. My friends and I used to talk about the best way to dispose of a body while looking around the sporting goods section of Wally World. Does that mean a cop can begin an investigation?
Duh, yes! Are you really saying that a cop can't talk to you or ask to look in your car under those circumstances? And I did say "ask".
What if he finds a body nearby that was disposed of in a creative manner with no other evidence? What would the trial be like? Just because they heard me talking about body disposal and they found a body, does that mean I'm guilty?
Duh, no! You can be investigated based on circumstantial evidence, but not convicted based on it. If they needed proof before they could investigate, what's the point of having investigations? - You already have proof! Cops investigate lots of people, and the cops know that most of them will be innocent, but in your freaky world, the cops couldn't even ask you if you have a alibi.
Lets say I'm unpopular in school. To boost my reputation, I decide to blog about how I burned down a house. I got most of the details from $local_news and just made the rest up. Now, they always leave out details. Let'say I fill in $accelerant from last month's CSI. Just so happens that the real criminal got the idea from the same place. They have your claim, they have you knowing an unpublished detail. Will I be convicted?
Whether or not you're convicted will depend on what other evidence they find and how fast you stop being an idiot. Bragging about committing crimes will attract cops - duh! And if you do get convicted, you have only yourself to blame.
What if I have a pic of me testing a gravity bong with tobacco. Should my school (assuming I'm at least 18) be able to suspend me?
In my opinion, no. If it isn't school related, the most they should be able to do is inform your parents, and sometimes not even that.
What about if I post a chat log of me talking about BSDM with a 14yo girl? Just because there is text containing the claim that she is 14 does not, in fact, mean that she is 14...or even a girl. Should that open the door for a child-sex investigation?
Duh, yes, again! Are you really saying that talking about commiting a crime in public isn't a reason to look at whether you've commited a crime or not? Not convict, not arrest, not even probable cause for a warrent, but just investigate?
Who is to say that my blog is not a work of fiction?
You are! If it's fiction, state that clearly (like most sites, TV shows, and movies), and don't be suprised if the cops ask you a few questions when a real crime happens that mimics one of your stories. You don't have to answer, and they can't do anything but watch you (while you're in public) and ask other people questions until they have some sort of solid evidence.
Then why should they troll MySpace looking for, and opening investigations on, stuff that may or may not be true?
So they can find out if it's true or not! DUH!!!
You're then assuming that the proxy server isn't operated by a CIA front company.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
And what makes you think laws and even constitutions can't be changed.
What makes you think that all actors within the government, even today, act through above ground legal channels?
The simple fact is, once the information is out there, it is out there. Come revolutions, come secret police, come criminal organizations.
I came to the realisation the other day that just no good could come from posting my social networks online and cancelled my myspace and friendster accounts.
Its a danger to me from connection with everyone that I know, and should I be affiliated with anything someone dislikes, a danger to all of my friends through me.
Not cool, and not worth the only marginal fun that comes from using myspace.
Not to mention that all the extended network bullshit is just that...bullshit. Because every account starts with that "tom" dude as a friend... and so everybody is in your extended network because some dickhead in every network hasn't dropped him.
Or maybe everybody really is connected that well... but I doubt it.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"