Social Media a Threat To Undercover Cops

angry tapir writes "Facebook has proven to be one of the biggest dangers in keeping undercover police officers safe, due to applications such as facial recognition and photo tagging, according to an adjunct professor at ANU and Charles Sturt University. Mick Keelty, a former Australian Federal Police commissioner, told the audience at Security 2011 in Sydney that because of the convergence of a number of technologies undercover policing may be 'impossible' in the future."

Comments

Here's an idea.

[ryanmcdonough]

Don't have a public profile and don't go out with friends and have them publicly tag your photos. Just an idea.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't have a public profile and don't go out with friends and have them publicly tag your photos. Just an idea.

But that takes actual communication with your friends, something social networking replaced.
Nowadays it's not hip to have common sense, basic reasoning skills or actually interact with friends any further than surface banter aimed to make you look cool to nobodies.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Nirvelli]

They already do. It is, however, a bit hard to get to.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Captain Hook]

It's not just about face recognition. If I was in a group which was likely to attracted undercover police attention without the organisation being outright illegal, such as the various environmental groups that the police have been targetting here in the UK.

I would be asking to see the facebook profile of anyone trying to get into the group and if they don't have one or their profile only goes back a few months I would be extremely suspicious.

The police don't just need the ability to stop facial recognition, they need to be allowed to craft entire profiles, with back dated statuses, relationships which can withstand superficial checking etc.

You break the cover of spy by catching the little lies, and facebook gives you a lot of small pieces of information which must all tie to together to avoid suspicion.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Opportunist]

You needn't be part of Facebook to suddenly be profiled. All you need is a friend who's insensitive enough to tag you on their photo gallery.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Opportunist]

Old hacker's law dictates that any backdoor the police may have to any system will be abused, not only by the police but also by people who are smarter than the average cop who has to use the backdoor.

In other words, if you offer this service to the police, it will soon be abused by people who craft identities for other, even worse, purposes.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Serious Callers Only]

I would be asking to see the facebook profile of anyone trying to get into the group and if they don't have one or their profile only goes back a few months I would be extremely suspicious.

So you'd only recruit idiots who have a Facebook profile - smart move for a clandestine organisation!

Re:Here's an idea.

[delinear]

The point is you don't need to have an account for people to have added your photo, and soon anyone who wants to find out who you are will just be able to create an account, upload your photo and ask it to look for tagged matches and they'll instantly see the photos from the policeman's christmas ball or whatever. Your idea of not matching certain faces is unworkable for one simple reason: I create an account, I upload some guy's face to my wall and tag it, I create another account and upload the same photo as the owner's face. Facebook returns a "no matches found" message. Since I know the photo is there and is identical there's only one reason they'd return that message - you've just created a more reliable method of identifying undercover police that doesn't rely on tagging or matching blurry photos. The law against facial recognition is a nice idea that will never happen for one simple reason, it's potentially more useful to the authorities than the problems it creates.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Joce640k]

If "social interaction" means "Facebook", then maybe not.

OTOH people managed to interact socially before Facebook. Weird but true.

Re:Here's an idea.

[Qzukk]

The law against facial recognition is a nice idea that will never happen for one simple reason, it's potentially more useful to the authorities than the problems it creates.

That just means that the law will make an exception for cops, just like every other law. Like those laws that let cops film whoever they please (if you aren't doing anything wrong...), but if you film a cop, they get to rough you up, drop your camera a few times then accidentally run it over with a squad car.

Here's a better idea.

[mcgrew]

Don't have secret police in the first place. "Undercover" cops have no place in a free society. Only police states have or need secret police. If social media makes the secret police impossible, GOOD!

As to the cop's safety, being a cop is nowhere near the top ten list of dangerous jobs. A taxi driver or construction worker is in far more danger than a cop.

Re:Here's a better idea.

[Vintermann]

If you have the apparatus to infiltrate criminal organizations, you have the apparatus to infiltrate political organizations too.

You CAN do a lot to criminal organizations without infiltration. Infiltration has a high cost, in the form of increased paranoia, tribality and possibly brutality in the infiltrated groups. This worsens crime, and lessens defection.

Also, infiltration has a cost in the other direction - what it does to police departments and infiltrators themselves. When the police get used to betraying people's trust as part of their job, they start doing that in other ways, too. Adopting such means really is a slippery slope.

Re:Here's a better idea.

[Hatta]

Anyone sensible would realize that we can't trust the police to act sensibly. Police regularly shoot civilians in cold blood, and get paid vacation for it. Look how well police oversight works in practice and rethink your post.

Re:Here's a better idea.

[mosb1000]

Poor people tend to be more afraid of the police than anybody else. I don't know where you get your information, but "upper middle class white suburban" people are the most likely to support the police. Most people see any interaction with a police officer as a cause for concern, and this fear is based on previous interactions. The only upper middle class white suburban-ites that fear police are kids who are out getting into trouble. All poor people need fear them every day. In a lot of ways, police consider poverty as probable cause, and in any case, they know they can hassle poor people without fear of being sued, especially if they are illegal immigrants.

Re:Here's a better idea.

[nomadic]

I get my information from experience and observation. While upper middle class white suburban people may support the police in general, the subset that are slashdot posters tend to be anti-authoritarian but also have a lifelong experience of being insulated from crime. Poorer communities distrust the police, but they would not want them completely absent; since they are most at risk for being crime victims, they do want them there at some level.

Re:Take that copper

[drinkypoo]

Most cops are corrupt. Here in Lake County, California we finally got a Sheriff who actually wants to change things. Here is an article on him being cleared of certain wrongdoings. Because our police force is so very corrupt (with ties to meth production and such) he did not inform them of a bust the sheriff's department was conducting. The cops found out anyway and showed up to point guns at them just to fuck up the whole operation, because the bust was against one of their cronies.

Why do I say most cops are corrupt? Because if you're a cop and you cover for a bad cop, you are precisely as bad as he is. You are precisely as responsible for his actions, because it is your job to attempt to prevent and to help bring people to justice for these actions. You are instead a traitor to the American people, and I hope you die of ball cancer.

It cuts both ways...

[gr8_phk]

Facebook has helped the police get dirt on people in many cases. Don't be surprised when it works the other way too.

Best news I've heard all year...

[bistromath007]

Everything we lose in security will be gained tenfold in liberty if undercover policing shits the bed.

Mis-Tag, False ID

[retroworks]

You create a fake Facebook profile and mistag-yourself everywhere. You have a police department staff scan photos and mistag you. With a little more effort, Facebook could become the best thing that ever happened for people setting up false identities. But Facebook has to let you mis-tag yourself. I started a Facebook Group "Data Camouflage Anonymous" for the purpose of mis-tagging and mis-identifying photos (to water down the facial recognition database) and within a day found my "tagging" ability turned off by Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/groups/151915044879668/ Facebook should be no more reliable at facial data than they are at birthday records (which are a joke).

Re:Here's a novel idea...

[gl4ss]

you're missing the point, they can't even associate themselfs with OTHER people using facebook or social media, because if they appear on some wedding photos etc for some family, you know that there's an association there. basically the same sort of stuff that would have gotten them busted before if the bad guys would have hired a private eye to do some digging.