Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

13 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Feel bad for his girlfriend by danbuter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe they should have deleted his girlfriends name and location from this stuff, before publishing it to the net.

    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. 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.

  2. Direct link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/fb-subpoena-db/index.html

  3. Unclear antecedents are dangerous! by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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."

    Indeed, if the cops are going around robbing and murdering, why should any of us worry about a Facebook profile?

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    1. Re:Unclear antecedents are dangerous! by colinrichardday · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, clearly it was the Facebook document that robbed two women and murdered a third.

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

    to a formal subpoena?

  5. 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?

  6. Re:Buttholes! Buttholes! Buttholes! Levodopa! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the best argument for browsing at -1 that I have ever seen. Even though it looks like it's machine-generated nonsense, it's still one of the best comments ever made on Slashdot.

  7. Re:Buttholes! Buttholes! Buttholes! Levodopa! by EdIII · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the best argument for browsing at -1 that I have ever seen. Even though it looks like it's machine-generated nonsense, it's still one of the best comments ever made on Slashdot.

    I wholly agree. It reminds me of Vogon poetry. Butthole is used throughout, quite successfully, as a lubricant for the deep prose sprinkled about. Without it, I believe it would make much less sense. While the statement that "God is a dog's anus farting loudly" was quite provocative as a commentary on the meaning of life, it derailed rather quickly with the nonsequiter introduction of a catfish arriving at noon of all times....

    Not the work of a true Vogon master, but I sense much potential.

  8. Re:The last thing they would care about by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Allegedly. Innocent until proven guilty.

    If you're not a lawyer, a judge, or a juror, you have no obligation to maintain an artificial neutrality with regards to someone's guilt or innocence.

    Innocent in the eyes of the law != innocent.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  9. Re:The last thing they would care about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is true, but popular opinion is unlikely to be more correct than the courts, since they don't even have all the information available to them.

    If a man is found innocent in court but is treated as guilty by society, then what's the point of even having a trial?

  10. Re:Buttholes! Buttholes! Buttholes! Levodopa! by Reality+Master+301 · · Score: 5, Funny

    This calls for a new alternative mod point, "+1 Poetic"