Federal Agents Quietly Using Social Media

SpuriousLogic passes along this excerpt from the ChiTrib: "The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too. US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. ... The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips. Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree... can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries." The FoIA lawsuit was filed by the EFF, which has posted two documents obtained from the action, from the DoJ and Internal Revenue (more will be coming later). The rights group praises the IRS for spelling out limitations and prohibitions on deceptive use of social media by its agents — unlike the DoJ. The US Marshalls and the BATFE could not find any documents related to the FoIA request, so presumably they have no guidelines or prohibitions in this area.

Comments

Is anyone surprised?

[calibre-not-output]

If you need a leaked document to know that spies are spying, you fail at life. Obviously information-gathering agencies will deploy personnel wherever there are large amounts of potentially useful information to be gathered.

Re:Is anyone surprised?

[amicusNYCL]

They are required to identify themselves in person, are they not?

No, they're not.

Why should online be any different?

It shouldn't.

source

Are Police Allowed to Lie?
The question of whether or not the police may lie during the course of their work goes hand in hand with the question of entrapment.

It is well accepted that deception is often "necessary" to catch those who break the law. There is no question that police officers are allowed to directly mislead and/or deceive others about their identity, their law enforcement status, their history, and just about anything else, without breaking the law or compromising their case. Conversely, it is illegal for an ordinary citizen to lie to the police in many jurisdictions.

I'd hope so.

[Mekkah]

If you are making your information publicly available, wouldn't you expect your government to take advantage of it?

Hint: Don't accept friend requests from someone named, Uncle Sam, Uncle Sammy, or that super model that wants to know where you live and were Saturday night between 10pm and 2 am.

Oh and don't tweet if you're gonna lie about it later to police.

Re:I'd hope so.

[lxt]

Exactly. People who are stupid enough to fall for it deserve what they get.

This isn't the government going behind your back, putting you under covert surveillance. It's completely in the open. A friend of mine used to work for the MA state police, in the computer forensics unit. He was amazed at the number of gang members who would just openly accept his friend request on Facebook, which would lead to him quietly beavering away to figure out the social network of the gang, where they met, what they got up to. Sneaky? Perhaps, but not illegal.

Really, people are just plain stupid.

Re:I'd hope so.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Probably means that there's a shortage of real crooks like terrorists and spies, so the feds have to do something to justify their elephantine budgets and keep their bust-numbers high.

Hey, ICE? Hi, this is Agent Smith from the FBI and I'm calling to report a MySpace profile featuring a black guy with gold chains and a new car that he probably stole from some hapless old lady. Can you go pick 'him up for me? Warrants? Nah, if the judge asks just say that the guy's an illegal alien or he's downloading music or somethin'. On your way? Thanks.

Re:I'd hope so.

[betterunixthanunix]

However, the government should not be taking advantage of stupidity to undermine our rights. It is one thing for an agent to communicate with people who are already under investigation -- such as with your state police friend who communicates with gang members -- but it is an entirely different story when the government starts randomly probing into people's lives. The line is very, very fine here...

Re:I'd hope so.

[Dog-Cow]

We're not talking about the police asking Facebook to hand over server storage so they can browse at their leisure. We're talking about government agents using Facebook or Twitter the exact same way that you or I would use it. There's nothing wrong with that.

I suppose that it's possible someone could have an issue with possible entrapment, but I can't see where there's a privacy issue just because you don't think the stranger whose invite you accepted might be a cop.

Re:I'd hope so.

[betterunixthanunix]

No, we are talking about government agents create fake profiles for the purpose of extracting information from people and granting access to the profile to other agents, and then calling it an "undercover operation." It is the equivalent of a government agent convincing someone to give the agent a key to their home, so that law enforcement personnel can wander through their house and look through their things.

It is as much of a privacy issue as an FBI agent going undercover as a babysitter would be. If it is just a technique for finding information on people who are already suspects in a crime, it is a prudent method for gathering evidence; but if and when the situation changes and the government starts using these tactics against random people, just to see if crimes are being committed, then it is a serious invasion of privacy.

Re:I'd hope so.

[betterunixthanunix]

What stops this process from being automated or performed en masse? There are chat bots that could carry on a conversation with a person long enough to convince the person to accept a friend request, and the government could then simply download the entire profile that the person posted -- and continue to receive updates, and all done automatically. It would not be trivial, but it is certainly conceivable that such an operation could be carried out by a large agency that employs expert programmers.

-or- Welcome to the internet

[pavon]

Where the men are men, the women are men, and the little girls are FBI agents.

Also..

[e2d2]

They can also meet you at a bar and pretend they want some coke. A fucking travesty of justice I tell you.

Re:Also..

[Thinboy00]

Hint: Don't friend random strangers on Facebook et al.

Why is this different?

[captaindomon]

How is this different than what the FBI does offline? It's just an online version of an offline undercover sting, right?

Good

[SoupGuru]

If they weren't doing something like this, I'd wonder what the hell was wrong with them.

Turn it against them

[MSRedfox]

So if they want to use my tweets to break alibis, does this mean I can make tweets to reinforce them? '8:00 in bed and going to sleep' '9:00 woke up to the sound of a gun shot in the distance, I hope Bob the snitch is okay' '9:15 Going downtown with Officers for a cup of coffee, they are so nice' '9:30 after officers read my tweets, they apologized for wasting my time and drove me home'

"Publicly available"

[betterunixthanunix]

Facebook is popular because its users believe that their information is not publicly available. Yes, it is a complete falsehood, but the reality of life is that most people do not realize just how public the information on Facebook really is, and that is why these sorts of activities are so problematic. We are supposed to live in a country where the government does not arbitrarily spy on its citizens, even for the purposes of law enforcement.

Police are allowed to lie.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

IANAL, so don't believe or rely on a word of my post. However:

(1) Police are allowed to lie. The most common example is in interrogations and interviews. One of the most successful techniques for eliciting a confession from a suspect is confronting them with evidence against the suspect. The police will do this with both false and true evidence. The false evidence (pretending they have evidence) may be slightly less effective than true evidence, IIRC, but both are common interrogation techniques. Source: Lao's "Inside the Interrogation Room." Google it. Personally, I think it's one of the main reasons that we have a huge segment of society that really hates the police--it's not because the police are arresting them, it's because to most people, a lie is unprofessional and insulting, and the police use them all the time. It's a problem, because officers do a lot of really good work and are often very professional. I think every time I've encountered a police officer, they've been polite and professional. But many people I've known have had the opposite experience.

(2) You are usually allowed to lie to a cop, but you shouldn't. It IS a crime to lie to a Federal Agent, IIRC, but in most states I don't think it's a crime to lie to a police officer. But if you're arrested for something and you go to trial, you're going to have to explain why you lied to the cop. And a cop can ALWAYS find something to arrest you with. Good luck getting the jury to believe you after you've been caught in a lie. "So you lied to the officer?" "Yes." "But that means you're a liar, doesn't it?" "Er..." "So you're story is you lie sometimes to police officers, but you don't lie to juries?"

(3) Police are also allow to do pretty much anything a member of the public can do, and some things a member of the public can't, to pursue a criminal investigation. For example, in... Wisconsin, I think... police officers can do what would be considered identity theft if someone else did it.

(4) In the South, police can do whatever they want. This isn't true legally, but sometimes it's true in fact. (Although you can always fight them in court, after.) They may be more helpful if you're white (I actually saw them helping a woman change her tire!) but more likely to pull you out of the car and threaten you at shotgun point for being both black and in their town. (Happened to someone I know.) Although these are generalizations; there are really wonderful police officers all over, as there are really horrible ones in many places. You get encounters with good cops and bad cops everywhere.

Re:Warrant

[PopeRatzo]

And before anyone flames me for warrant-less wiretapping by the NSA, that was an illegal act and they got burned hard for it.

Is that why warrantless wire-tapping continues?

FISA is still the law of the land. The PATRIOT Act is still the law of the land.

If you ever want to be chilled to the bone, read the PATRIOT Act. You can do it in just a few hours.

By the way, it's worth noting that the renewal of the PATRIOT Act was passed using the same type of "deem and pass" legislative maneuver that is now being used by the democrats in the House of Representatives to pass health care. Funny how it wasn't that big a deal back then. The argument is that the PATRIOT Act wasn't as big a deal as health reform.

Considering PATRIOT allows unidentifiable law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain you without identifying themselves or giving you any Miranda rights, I'm inclined to disagree. But that's just me.