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FBI's Facebook Monitoring Leads To Arrest In England

Posted by timothy on from the bomb-president-motorcade-rutabaga dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that armed police were called to a UK school earlier today after being advised of a potential threat by the FBI. The school stated that the FBI 'raised the alarm after Internet scanning software picked up a suspicious combination of words,' strongly implying that they are carrying out routine, automated surveillance of social networking sites. While in this case it does appear that there may have been a genuine threat, the story nonetheless raises significant privacy concerns."

9 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. I understood this was from 4Chan, not Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    This could well be 'shopped but I was shown this 5 days before that BBC story.

    http://www.photo-pimp.com/dgnr8/lost/drf.jpg

  2. I undestood this was from 4Chan, not Facebook by Mattniche · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to this image I saw 5 days before that BBC story.

    http://www.photo-pimp.com/dgnr8/lost/drf.jpg

    Odd.

    1. Re:I undestood this was from 4Chan, not Facebook by HopefulIntern · · Score: 2, Informative

      You are correct sir, I was actually browsing the board when this was posted. But then, stuff like this gets posted all the fucking time (often they are reposts [..of reposts of reposts of reposts]), so I paid no real notice.

    2. Re:I undestood this was from 4Chan, not Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Indeed. I was browsing the thread as well. There were two idiots who posted the threat along with pictures of their faces holding what looked to be like real guns. When they gave the name of their school /b/ took it from there. I recall at least one person on the board mentioning that they sent the information to the FBI, but most were contacting the school and various media outlets in Britain. I doubt anyone on the baord took the threat very seriously, they just wanted to do all they could to see the kids get in trouble for making the threats in the first place. So they hyped it all up and contacted the authorities. That is all.

      I don't know how the hell this story got twisted into the FBI scanning for combinations of words and phrases on the internet. This was most definitely reported by btards for teh lulz.

  3. Re:Seriosly... WTF? by MRe_nl · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/31/what_are_those_words/

    --
    "Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
  4. Re:Trolling, trolling by Kral_Blbec · · Score: 3, Informative

    The FBI scanning the public traffic of an American website is in no way is comparable to monitoring you down in Aussie. Take off the tin foil.

  5. Re:Trolling, trolling by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Informative

    No Lochlear - here is the best I could find: http://girls.c64.org/p_bloempjes_and_byties_01.gif (an amazing 160x200x16 colors)

    http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_01.png (352x240x64 colors)
    http://www.micro-paradise.com/Gifs/Images/Amiga/Amiga_sex_tetris_02.png (Amiga Tetris)

    Stickman from 1986 - http://codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/6a0120a85dcdae970b0128777032aa970c-pi (4100 colors)
    Another Amiga image - http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/h/ha/ham6example.png

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  6. Re:Trolling, trolling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.asciipr0n.com/pr0n/

    You know you want to.

  7. Turns out to be a false alarm. by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative

    Looks like a false alarm. Later report: "A 19-year-old man who was arrested by armed police at a Merseyside school has been released on bail. ". "Merseyside Police said that their inquiries were continuing into the man, who had imitation firearms and a computer seized from his home. The alert had been raised after a threat with a picture of a gun was posted on a social networking website."

    I had something like this happen a few years back. I have a domain in ".com" which is the same as the "co.uk" domain of a boarding school in England. Occasionally I'd get misaddressed mail. (This was back when you could use a catchall address for a domain without being overwhelmed by spam.) Once I got a message with the subject "I am going to kill you tonight". After checking the headers, it was clear that it was from someone at the school, not a death threat aimed at me. (Sent from .co.uk, addressed to same second level domain in .com.) Called up the school in England and reached someone in authority. 8 hour time difference; middle of the night there, someone had to be awakened. Turned out it was a 12-year old kid sending a dumb email to one of the other kids. He was disciplined by the school.

    Today, they'd send in a SWAT team.