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UK Police To Get Facebook Lessons
jhernik writes "The police are to receive training on how to use Facebook and Twitter to catch people committing serious crimes. The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) will overhaul its training modules to include sessions on the social networking sites for detectives. 'This programme is a vital part of the career pathway for detectives and the new training covers sensitive areas of policing where limited guidance existed previously,' said deputy chief constable Nick Gargan, acting head of the NPIA, in a statement to the Press Association. 'These improvements are exactly what detectives need to tackle the challenges and complexities of modern policing effectively,' he added. 'The changes underline the importance to having a national agency to provide guidance and train detectives to a single high standard so they can work on investigations in any part of the country and give their colleagues and the public the best quality service in fighting crime.'"
Perhaps people will stop posting incriminating evidence, but something tells me those photos of people plastered aren't going away.
"serious crimes" like uploading a picture of your friend smoking weed, or your "5 days shy of 18" girlfriend in her underwear.
She'll calm down once he sends her some shit for her farm.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Unless it's clearly child porn -
But it's total bullshit if any cops anywhere think they can arrest people for looking drunk, or being seen in a photo with a bottle of booze even if they're underage - or a photo of someone smoking something out of a bong or pipe - there is no way they could prove what the substance was, and while I am not sure about the UK, in the US our legal system hasn't eroded to that point yet, I am sure it probably will as we continue our descent into fascism and away from the rule of law.
it's bad enough that people think that the system works how it oes on TV and it's a hell of a rude awakening when you find out just how ridiculously fucked up it really is as it stands now.
Some dumb people have called radio shows and say they robed a bank. So you can want to be able to use that in court and not have the case drooped as the cop did not do things right in getting the evidence.
Some dumb people have called radio shows and say they robed a bank.
I'd like to see that - it'd have to be a pretty big robe. Was there a wizard hat too?
So you can want to be able to use that in court and not have the case drooped as the cop did not do things right in getting the evidence.
Yeah, it's always embarrasing when your case starts to droop.
I hope they don't find the bodies that I buried on my Farmville.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
That this method can't be foiled by simply changing the privacy settings or... say... not posting this sort of evidence in there.
They should still catch people who take those precautions, it will just require more time and resources.
But part of the job of police is to catch perps as quickly as possible, and that includes investigating the fruitful types of avenues that are easiest to investigate first. Most criminals are stupid and if joined to a social network will reveal some HINT authorities could use, such as their location at X, so searching FBs raises the bar on the "perfect crime", whatever that is.
Facebook/social network investigation should be among the easiest, and can easily be automated, especially if the social network provider has a policy of assisting authorities, and especially if they can combine this with info from cell companies -- such as the location of various FB/Twitter users when they posted their tweets.
Posting something completely innocuous could still flag the perp, if it revealed their location close to the crime scene, for example, at an unusual time. Even if their update didn't discuss their location.... the social network provider knows when the update was posted, and their cell phone company will know where their device was located, when the post was made.
"private settings" do no good, with the legal burden needed for police to require cooperation as low as it is. The burden of proof is not probable cause, it's much easier to require a third party to cooperate, since no warrant is needed. One of the differences is broad 'fishing expeditions' are legal and allowed, because the information posted "in private" is in the hands of a third party.
When I read this summary, why does it read like a description of a South Park episode?
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Funny but it seems that a good portion of those stupid people are either writing laws or enforcing them.
Maybe its more like How to use FB without destroying your case or How to use the special police interfaces into FB.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
covering such things as
1 beginning a chain of evidence (and keeping it intact)
2 creating a useable record of the page(s)
3 how to get the info you need without blowing your cover or tripping the entrapment trap
4 properly citing the pages in reports
ect
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Ok, ok. Let me amend my statement.
Funny but it seems that a good portion of those stupid people are either in charge of creating laws or enforcing them.
Ok, yeah, that still doesn't quite get it.
I don't think it's naivete or incompetence but definitely ignorance, greed, or maliciousness.
Consider this: It's naive to think DRM won't negatively affect legitimate purchasers and will stop piracy but it's incompetent to outlaw breaking DRM and malicious to shut down internet connections based on mere accusations of piracy.
And, I will say outright that malicious (or at least sociopathic greed) is at play in Arizona where private prison companies helped draft Senate Bill 1070. Link
Oh, and there's red light cameras, too. Those in charge of enforcing the law shortened the yellow lights which resulted in an increase of rear end accidents and they did just to make a buck.
The law feels (or at least appears) to be written in black&white terms but it's a colorful world. There should be room for discretion and leniency as well as shame and punishment. You might say that that's already a problem as people on the bottom of the financial totem pole get hammered by the law while people on top have their lawyers apologize and they go about their merry ways and I would agree with you. And, frankly, I don't really have a solution short of bringing back 1950's tax rates since those with wealth and power use that wealth and power to influence elections and lawmakers to gain ever more.
Talk about trying hard to keep people from doing any thinking on their own. They can just keep that in mind every time they need to decide how moral it is to bust a college kid for smoking pot and getting his federal aid revoked.