Patriot Act Bypasses Facebook Privacy

Geoffreyerffoeg writes "An article from the National Association of Colleges and Employers contains yet another horror story about a prospective hire's Facebook being checked — with a different twist. The interviewee had enabled privacy on his profile, '[b]ut, during the interview, something he was not prepared for happened. The interviewer began asking specific questions about the content on his Facebook.com listing and the situation became very awkward and uncomfortable. The son had thought only those he allowed to access his profile would be able to do so. But, the interviewer explained that as a state agency, recruiters accessed his Facebook account under the auspices of the Patriot Act.' How can a 'state agency' use the Patriot Act to subpoena a Facebook profile?"

Comments

Oh, I'm sure it's okay

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, if he isn't a terrorist, he doesn't have anything to hide...... right?

Re:Oh, I'm sure it's okay

[tinkerghost]

If it's declared private, and protected as private under relevant TOS & municiple code, it shouldn't matter if it's on the internet or not. Military sites are on the internet, and even though some are open - no password - going into them to look for things is criminal computer tresspass - remember they are extraditing the UK UFO nutjob over exactly that.
I have a private web server up - it's technically part of the internet. If you come in on an IP address I havn't approved you get bounced to the please go away page. Are you telling me that if the govt wants to, they have every right to come in & check the data on the server just 'because it's connected to the internet.'?
As for your statement that "they simply accessed what he put up for the world to see" - declaring it private is an act which explicitly states that he did not "put it up for the world to see"
I agree that if this is an actual occurance, then the use of the PATRIOT ACT for things as trivial as a job interview are a fullfillment of the worst fears people had about it at the time it was originally passed.

Re:Oh, I'm sure it's okay

[Anonymous Coward]

If a court of law and the system of justice it is supposed to enforce means anything to you (which you imply by citing the not guilty verdict as evidence of your innocence), you should really find a new lawyer and sue them. It's definitely not true that "you can't". It may be that you have less of a chance of winning than a non-white guy, but that's not what it's all about.

Ahh, spoken like a person who's never had a real encounter with our "justice" system. Technically you're right but what the laws say aren't always how things work, just like how the cops couldn't even get their story straight about the grandparent's supposed method of assaulting them.

Since he's not a minority if he sues the police will harass him. No one is innocent of everything, with laws how they are nowadays you're probably violating a few waking up in the morning. Since he's not a minority the newspapers/tv stations/etc. will ignore whatever the police do to him and they will eventually find something he's really guilty of to charge him with, probably multiple somethings. He might win the case against them but it would be in exchange for his life of freedom.

Faced with that choice would you sue? Or would you write it off as a loss you couldn't do anything about and never trust law enforcement again as long as you live? Most people chose the latter. You may think you wouldn't now, but when you come face to face with that future you'll find that it's not so easy to take the idealistic path because of how reality works.

Comon Sense Tips For Today's Youth

[gasmonso]

1. Never use your real name on the Net.

2. Never disclose any information under your profile especially if you violated rule 1.

3. Never violate rule 1 or rule 2.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

abuse od power

[mikesum]

If a law is written in such away that it can be abused, it will be abused.

This is what's wrong with slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

How can anyone comment on this article intelligently? No details are given, did he sign a privacy waiver (as you do with many classified gov't jobs), what was the agency? Possibly the recruiter was giving him a BS-line about the patriot act. It's still not a routine enough matter the patriot act would be invoked to investigate some low-level intern....

Subpoena?

[geminidomino]

Who said anything about a subpoena? TFA certainly doesn't.

Shit, they probably didn't use the "PATRIOT act". My money is on the probability that they simply SAID the words "PATRIOT act" and facebook folded up like an origami swan.

Here's a Little Advice ...

[MeauxToo]

(Warning karma killing rant coming ... damn whipper snappers.)

.. from the cold, hard world. If you want to keep something private, keep it to yourself. The moment that you entrust private information that is not protected under the law to a 3rd party is the moment when you should expect it to see the light of day at some point. I am not speaking from a legal perspective, but from a practical perspective. You have friends with blogs? Facebook accounts? Mouths? How long until they open their big mouthes -- they certainly some mightly loud megaphones.

Patriot Act or not, marked private or not -- saying something on Facebook, MySpace, or their ilk is akin to a billboard in the middle of the town square. Kids today think that they can post ellicit, embarressing, or immature activities on the Internet, mark the information as private, and, magically, no one they don't want to know will ever find out. Learn some discretion, and keep matters to yourself.

In short, quite your whining and develop some common sense.

Re:If the job...

[Vo0k]

because that's a one-liner cut-off of any discussion.

Why do you want my ID? PATRIOT ACT.
Why do I have to spend night in jail? PATRIOT ACT.
Why do I have to undergo full anal search? PATRIOT ACT.
Why are you keeping me in Guantanamo for 4 years without right to a lawyer? PATRIOT ACT.
Why did you kick my kitty and took $10 from my wallet? PATRIOT ACT.

And if you're going to question it and disagree, they will invoke the PATRIOT ACT and lock you up in Guantanamo. Under charges of anti-american activity (undermining authority of the PATRIOT ACT) which is terrorism.

Darwin

[4solarisinfo]

My roommate recently started a blog, and belongs to several of the social networking sites. When he ask me why I didn't join him, I simply explained that thought history we've always had the ability to list all our friends and thoughts in a diary and leave it on our front porch for anyone to read, but nobody ever wanted to.

Just because we can doesn't mean we should...

Why would anyone put things on the internet (at any security level) that could prevent them from getting a job? Sounds Darwinian to me, if you're too dumb to protect your private life, you're probably related to the person taking home a laptop with 25,000 social security numbers on it, so good riddance!

Re:"I have a rule of thumb here,"

[Cid Highwind]

I wonder if he realizes that with the right connections and a few thousand bucks, *everything* about his life is shared on the internet. Financial transactions, phone bills, property ownership, FedEx and UPS shipping records, legal records, etc are all there in corporate databases and on information brokering sites. A judicious use of the phrase "patriot act" could probably get you all the bank statements and phone records you could ever want.

He can be smug now, but his next job interview could still go something like this...
"So, Mr. Rogers, I see here that in September of 1988 you wrote a $200 cheque to a women's health clinic that no member of your family had ever visited before. That's about the same time your teenage daughter broke off her relationship with the Tanner boy who used to live down the street from you, or at least she stopped calling him every night, isn't it? The CEO is strongly pro-life and things like this concern him greatly. Anything you want to tell us about that incident?"

Re:All your trolls are belong to U.S.

[Glonoinha]

Don't think for a second that IP addresses, time and date stamps aren't part of that post. Trace that back to the DHCP and maybe a few router logs associated with the IP address back at the ol' ISP and it's as easy as pie to identify an 'anonymous coward.' How do you think the RIAA does it, and they have to ask for cooperation - the feds just walk in and jack the data like they own the place.

You can run, but you can't hide.