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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."

8 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.

  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.