Facebook Scans Chats and Posts For Criminal Activity

An anonymous reader writes "Facebook has added sleuthing to its array of data-mining capabilities, scanning your posts and chats for criminal activity. If the social-networking giant detects suspicious behavior, it flags the content and determines if further steps, such as informing the police, are required. Reuters provides an example of how the software was used in March: 'A man in his early 30s was chatting about sex with a 13-year-old South Florida girl and planned to meet her after middle-school classes the next day. Facebook's extensive but little-discussed technology for scanning postings and chats for criminal activity automatically flagged the conversation for employees, who read it and quickly called police. Officers took control of the teenager's computer and arrested the man the next day.'"

Comments

Re:Facebook is a public place

[Anonymous Coward]

So Google has the right to monitor your chats and emails?

Could you explain to us how they target advertising next to your email on gmail... if they DON'T monitor your chats and emails?

In my inbox on gmail, I have two messages right now:

The first, from a recruiter I worked with a few years back, asking if I (or anybody I know) are interested in a particular software engineering job that he's trying to find candidates for. The ads displayed next to the email are for:
-- VMware Virtualization
-- Norwich Civil Engineering Masters program
-- Price Waterhouse Cooper consulting on "Succession Planning"
So... a job description with "virtualization" as a requirement; a discussion of "required education" and - generally speaking - a JOB description (for which "succession planning" might be an issue) are the ads.

The second email is a notification from twitter about a message a friend (who I game with occasionally) sent to me, containing a link to a Diablo 3 resource that he thought was really cool. The ads displayed next to that email are for:
-- SproutSocial (the #1 Twitter Marketing Tool!)
-- some other "Twitter management" tool
-- And a list of links: "More on Diablo 2," "More on Diablo 3," and "More on Blizzard games."

So yeah... not only does Google have the "right" to monitor my chats and emails, they are *actively doing it,* because that's how they target their advertising.

Re:Thought Crime

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> Why was he arrested for planning to have sex with her? Is that now illegal?

In the US, as in most countries, it is not true that it's only a crime if you succeed. So yes, planning to have sex with a 13 year old girl is a real crime.

A "thoughtcrime" (one word, from the book 1984) is an unacceptable belief. No action is required for these bad thoughts to be a crime, just the idea is a crime. He didn't merely have the thoughts, he took actions. Contacting a minor and going to meet her far exceed mere thoughts.

You're free to fantasize about killing your boss, but if you buy a gun and hide in the bushes outside his house and fire the gun at him (but miss), you've still committed a real crime. If attempted murder can be a crime, I don't see why attempted statutory rape wouldn't a crime. In fact, I don't see why soliciting a minor (even if he/she says no) shouldn't be a crime (it is).

Thoughts, ideas and motivations have always been a part of the law. The distinction between first degree (premeditated) murder and second degree murder predates the United States by thousands of years. In order to distinguish accidental and intentional murder, a jury must speculate on the thoughts of the accused. These personal thoughts are revealed through actions. We don't call that "thoughtcrime".

Contacting a minor, making plans to have sex, and going to meet her are all actions that the man took and are obviously illegal.

None of this should be seen as a defense of Facebook for spying on private communications. I just want to clarify that attempting to commit a crime is still a crime.

Re:Facebook is a public place

[mapkinase]

>So AT&T can listen to your phone conversations and read your text messages?

That's why UK's Big Brother criminalizes encryption:

> the UK will send its citizens to jail for up to five years if they cannot produce the key to an encrypted data set.

Re:Facebook is a public place

[cellocgw]

Next thing you know the US postal service will mandate that eveyone send their mail on postcards so it can be read. If you aren't doing anything wrong, why woudn't you mind anyone reading your messages? /sarcasm.

This was sarcasm, but it brings up a fundamental disastrous event back in the early days of the Internet. Some jackass at the FCC decided that, unlike the US Mail and the telephone, "the Internet" was not a communications system, and thus not subject to the same sort of privacy or access rights. And here we are now, with an Internet that is used more for communication than anything else.