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Here's What Facebook Sends the Cops In Response To a Subpoena

Posted by timothy on from the your-dna-in-a-box dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook already shares its Law Enforcement Guidelines publicly, but we've never actually seen the data Menlo Park sends over to the cops when it gets a formal subpoena for your profile information. Now we know. This appears to be the first time we get to see what a Facebook account report looks like. The document was released by the The Boston Phoenix as part of a lengthy feature titled 'Hunting the Craigslist Killer,' which describes how an online investigation helped officials track down Philip Markoff. The man committed suicide, which meant the police didn't care if the Facebook document was published elsewhere, after robbing two women and murdering a third."

6 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Feel bad for his girlfriend by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Or really anyone he befriended on facebook.

    The girlfriend might have been basically screwed on the deal no matter what, since as his girlfriend some of her information might have been out there anyway.

    It does seem like the article in question is very perturbed by the way the police released the info though, and didn't sanitize everything, leaving reporters to do it, who may not have realized that people can be linked via their unique facebook id's in the URL string etc. I suppose that's a good argument for an addendum to the facebook legal document pile, that if you release this information, the following other information should be redacted so as to not endanger the privacy of people not covered by the existing request.

  2. What does slashdot provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    to a formal subpoena?

  3. Private Messages by Celexi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is it just me, but it doesn't include private messages? or is it because there were none?

    1. Re:Private Messages by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Is this the same data people get when the request a DVD (under EU laws)? Because if it is, then I'm having a hard time imagining what the problem is... It's basically everything the user has posted on the site + their IP address/last login.

      Were people really surprised that the stuff they stored on Facebook was stored on Facebook?

  4. less verbose than I thought by mindcandy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Compared to what some of the European folks that were using DPA to harass Facebook and getting reams of data, this seems pretty tame .. perhaps it's because FB was just responding the subpoena as written?

    Nothing in TFA should surprise anyone that has any experience in enterprise IT .. think about your average webserver and what it logs by default.

  5. Re:Feel bad for his girlfriend by tbird81 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Not if your friend essentially releases that information (by committing crimes, then committing suicide). You've got to chose your friends well - even your Facebook friends.

    I've got a screenshot of Clayton Weatherston's Facebook main page. He's a narcissistic economics tutor who stabbed his girlfriend to death and her mother tried to get into the room - on his birthday.

    The year afterwards, there were still people wishing him happy birthday, oblivious to the fact that this guy was in police custody awaiting trial for a very well publicised and terrible murder. That's what Facebook friends are like.

    There were two med students I knew who still had him friended - they didn't even know how they knew him. They were clueless that their name was associated with one of the most hated people in NZ.