British Police Use Facebook to Gather Evidence

Amy Bennett writes "Move over police scanner and most-wanted poster. The Greater Manchester Police force has created a Facebook application to collect leads for investigations. The application delivers a real-time feed of police news and appeals for information. A 'Submit Intelligence' link takes a Facebook user to the police Web site where they can anonymously submit tips. Another link leads to the videos on YouTube featuring information on the police force, ongoing investigations and other advisories." As reader groschke writes, though, "Their access to user data raises significant civil liberties problems. They may be able to see more of your data than your friends or network members can — and you also expose your friends' data when you add the application. All without needing a subpoena or warrant."

Comments

No . . . not really

[OverlordQ]

They may be able to see more of your data than your friends or network members can -- and you also expose your friends' data when you add the application

Unless Facebook has given these people a special little hack into their API they can't get any more then any other facebook app can, and depending on your privacy settings, can turn out to be not much at all.

Re:No . . . not really

[Macthorpe]

Maybe I lived the sheltered life down in Devon, but neither of those things are exactly common occurences.

If you're referring to the fact that the police are actually fallible, meaning they aren't criminal-catching robot people who get it right 100% of the time, then I think you're the one with the problem here, not them.

Mistakes are made, things happen, and sometimes it's really, really shit and someone dies because of it. However, to pretend that the few mistakes they make cancel out the incredible amount of solved crimes they manage, even under the incredible crippling that the Labour government has inflicted on them with their target-based performance system, is disingenuous.

Re:No . . . not really

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Maybe I lived the sheltered life down in Devon, but neither of those things are exactly common occurences.

Perhaps not as extreme as the examples given, but the so-called anti-terrorism legislation is widely abused and used far too often for things that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism.

For example, just a few days ago, there was a story on our local news about how a local council literally had spies watching a family covertly for several days to determine whether they really lived within a school catchment area. They did. The surveillance was apparently triggered by a random tip-off that someone might be abusing the system, and instead of doing something like, say, going around to the house to knock on the door and see if they were home, they used authority under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to watch the people like something out of a crime movie, keeping logs of their movements and parked discreetly down the road from their house. Don't even ask how much public money was spent on that. The council officials whose organisation did this weren't even repentant after they were caught at it, mumbling some rubbish about the need to make sure the school admissions system isn't being abused. In other words, we have small-time local authority officials invoking anti-terrorism legislation to spy on ordinary families living on ordinary streets at vast expense and with huge invasion of privacy because of some random tip-off that the family might be doing something slightly out of order in applying for a school place. Do you really not see a problem with a legal framework that allows this?

If you really think this sort of thing is rare, just look at the statistics for how many people are arrested or stopped and searched under anti-terrorism legislation and compare that figure with how many people are even charged with (not necessarily convicted of) a terrorism-related offence. Then consider that those little mistakes have a way of completely screwing up someone's life (you try living with the stigma of your friends and family thinking you might be a terrorist for the rest of your days) and consider that the conviction rate is so low that it makes the headlines pretty much any time a couple of people are successfully prosecuted, and it's far from clear that a "greater good" argument applies here either.

Uhhh...so?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear god no! You reveal information to a public web site, and the police can read it without a warrant!

I'm as slippery slope as the next guy, but I see a huge difference between information placed on Facebook and limitles wiretaps. Or unreasonable searches. Or your passenger having $10 in pot can lead to the police taking, and selling, your car.

If you're trying to dodge an arrest warrant, well, perhaps you shouldn't be posting on Facebook, or driving erratically, or advertising on TV, or accepting that offer for free (insert whatever tickets/crap the police come up with).

and...

[thermian]

If you really object, you could, y'know, not install it in the first place.

I might give it a look, if only to get a handle on what all the knee jerk armchair reactionists are complaining about

Re:and...

[Khaed]

Or you could not put private information up on a website.

Seriously, people. It's a social website, a public website, and it doesn't need any of that information -- it's not like you have to use facebook to make internet purchases. I've never understood people who put information at places like that. Of course your privacy is going to be invaded. That's the damn point of the site... if you don't want the world to know it, don't transmit it over an unsecured connection to a website with a crummy privacy policy...

Anonymous?

[daliman]

Somehow I have my doubts that any "anonymous" tips would really be all that anonymous...

someone please distill what facebook actually does

[Anonymous Coward]

they get people to enter information about themselves and then record everything they can think to record, analyze the data, and .. what? sell the results to advertisers?

Pretty simple here people.

[Ethan Allison]

You add the application, and you give it a bunch of permissions. You don't like that? Don't add it. End of story, now shut up.

Re:Pretty simple here people.

[Sique]

... and you have to forbid all your friends to add that application too.

Re:Pretty simple here people.

[jimicus]

Alternatively, don't put something on the web that you wouldn't be happy showing to a room full of strangers, regardless of so-called "privacy" options (which have been shown time and again to be broadly meaningless).

Why do you hate freedom so much?

[timmarhy]

Your free to not install the app. your free to not even be on facebook. this might end up catching crooks.

i'm not seeing how this is a privacy or civil rights issue. how about these people put their efforts to a better cause.

The obvious recursion is ...

[moteyalpha]

So now children on Facebook will assume that it is safe to give information to a person who poses as a policeman or someone who has a similar logo. Children should not be asked to defend themselves. Let the police do their own work. I guess it gives them an excuse to browse the internet while they are having a donut. Yep Sarge, this pron site has lots of leads.

Re:The obvious recursion is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how long until the first scammer starts posting with a police logo to blackmail children into paying cash money to the scammer or else they will reveal to their parents that they smoke weed or whatever.

I mean, #1 is don't post anything publicly that you wouldn't say to your own mother (says the AC, ha ha).

But I'll bet this can be exploited, and will be in the future.

And There's a Civil Liberties Issue How?

[OakLEE]

I'm as much a civil libertarian as the next guy, but let's get one thing straight:

Nobody has any expectation of privacy (reasonable or otherwise) in information they put on a website that is publicly accessible to other people.

If you write on a friend's facebook wall about how you got this "killer deal on pot" or how you "got this totally awesome handjob from a local hooker" and police find out and charge you, it's your own damn fault for being an idiot.

Furthermore, if you buddy wants to play confidential informant and sell you out to the government, that's a problem between you and your buddy, not between you and the government.

If you don't want police (or anyone) prying into your business, don't make information about said business publicly accessible.

Re:And There's a Civil Liberties Issue How?

[jez9999]

If you write on a friend's facebook wall about how you got this "killer deal on pot" or how you "got this totally awesome handjob from a local hooker" and police find out and charge you, it's your own damn fault for being an idiot.

Actually, it's the law's fault for making these harmless actions crimes.

licence to goof around at work?

[petes_PoV]

Ahhh, right. So now all the Manchester police can claim to be following up leads when they're caught playing around in facebook at work. No wonder the general public is so hacked off - when police stats. show that they spend less than 13% of their time actually out of the police station, catching criminals.

I wonder what the quality of the "leads" they get will be. I would expect it's more likely to be from disaffected children using facebook who are annoyed with something their friends have done and report them out of spite.

Personally I think this looks like one of those great ideas that was dreamed up to make them look trendy and "in touch". I'd give it 6 months before it's quietly dropped under an initial tide of spam, false leads and time wasters, followed by complete and utter apathy.

Re:licence to goof around at work?

[timmarhy]

So do you manage by spreadsheet as well? because 13% of the time "catching criminals" is pretty meaningless.

If it's on the web...

[Tastecicles]

...then it's public information. Electronic publishing by its very nature precludes any rights, real or imagined, to privacy. But, like any other information on the internet, it's to be taken with a pinch of salt. I for one wouldn't trust for evidence.

What are we really policing here?

[HangingChad]

Since it seems unlikely people on Facebook are going to confess to be being a major drug trafficker, or show video clips of their last home invasion rape and robbery, I can't really see the value to society of wasting law enforcement resources clogging up the criminal justice system with the parade of Facebook petty crimes.

I don't know about the UK, but here in the states our criminal justice system is full. We have enough people in jail, more than enough people getting tagged with arrest records over fairly minor infractions. We need law enforcement to focus on the big problems and not be looking for reasons to dump some otherwise law-abiding person into the criminal justice meat grinder because they copped to some petty crime in Facebook.

And we need to de-criminalize a wide swath of drug possession crimes. We're spending billions keeping people in jail for a few oz's of pot. It's really quite insane.

Re:The problem is with facebook, not the police

[hacker]

A warrant grants a privilege to the police to forcibly obtain information they would otherwise not be allowed to obtain through force. But you don't need a warrant when you have cooperation.

...or live in the USA.

This article is about the UK, where these things called "warrants" actually have some sort of meaning or value. Here in the US, they no longer do. We have "retroactive warrants" and "FISA" to get around that.

Basically in the USA in today's administration, we have two approaches:

They raid your house/phone/work/car/laptop/pda/whatever, and if they:

1. a. ..find something they can use against you in court, they obtain a retroactive warrant to make the prosecution legal. If they do NOT find anything against you, they..
2. b. ..use the information obtained to pursue the investigatory path through your friends, coworkers, job history, credit rating, etc. to implicate you in some way for whatever it is they're trying to find you guilty of.

Let's not forget the credo here: "Innocent UNTIL proven guilty.." not "unless proven guilty", but "until".

Also, remember that stopping crimes here isn't about finding the guilty, it's about cherryp-picking the evidence to fit the prosecution's theory of the crime. Leaving a purse on a park bench and waiting for someone to grab it so you can nail them for purse-snatching, for example... or setting up a disabled car on the side of the road with a speed camera in the dash, to catch people speeding past.

It hasn't been about the crime for many years now.