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Facebook To DEA: Stop Using Phony Profiles To Nab Criminals
HughPickens.com writes: CNNMoney reports that Facebook has sent a letter to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration demanding that agents stop impersonating users on the social network. "The DEA's deceptive actions... threaten the integrity of our community," Facebook chief security officer Joe Sullivan wrote to DEA head Michele Leonhart. "Using Facebook to impersonate others abuses that trust and makes people feel less safe and secure when using our service." Facebook's letter comes on the heels of reports that the DEA impersonated a young woman on Facebook to communicate with suspected criminals, and the Department of Justice argued that they had the right to do so. Facebook contends that their terms and Community Standards — which the DEA agent had to acknowledge and agree to when registering for a Facebook account — expressly prohibit the creation and use of fake accounts. "Isn't this the definition of identity theft?" says privacy researcher Runa Sandvik. The DEA has declined to comment and referred all questions to the Justice Department, which has not returned CNNMoney's calls.
Isnt impersonation a crime? Oh wait, I forgot the pigs are above the law.
Nope. It's identity eminent domain.
Much in the same way regular theft by the government is called civil asset forfeiture...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"Harming the integrity of the community" = "Polluting our data"
And had her children been targeted and harmed or killed because of this irresponsible bullshit, the DEA would be singing a hell of a different tune.
They'd book her on a made-up charge and offer her a plea deal if she just kept her trap shut. Or 25 years else. And who'd believe a criminal like her anyway.
Facebook teaching ethics and rules to the DEA. That's a good one. ...")
Good luck with that anyway, Facebook! If there is any response at all from the DEA side, it will most likely a strong judicial mumbo jumbo meaning "STFU, or... " along a unilateral NDA (you know, because of "or
Maybe the best way to proceed if they do not comply would be to automatically put in parenthesis beside the account name a warning (This account may have been tempered with by authorities).
I'm sick of folks saying "entrapment" when a criminal is nabbed by any sort of deception. That isn't what entrapment is.
Indeed. In our society, it is perfectly acceptable for law enforcement to engage in deception to do their job. Whether it's cops sitting off the side of the highway at night with their lights turned off waiting for someone to speed by, or FBI agents convincing borderline-retards that they want to blow things up in an effort to get more terrorism arrests, it's all totally legal.
Personally, I find deceptive law enforcement undesirable, if not downright frightening, but the law is what the law is. If you don't like it, pressure your elected officials to have it changed. Of course, that won't accomplish anything, but at the very least people should stop complaining as though this type of abuse was illegal. It's not.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Sadly, it doesn't work that way.
In their view, they're allowed to break any law they need to to do their job. But if anybody else breaks any law, they can and will use that to achieve their goal.
So, when Schwartz does it, they can trump up the charge to make something stick. When the DEA does it, it's business as usual.
In other words, the law as applied to us little people is not the same as applied to law enforcement. Because they, in their minds, are above the law.
Welcome to the dystopian future, where laws exist only at the whim of those who enforce it, and only apply to those who don't.
Law enforcement is above the law. That they'll abuse it all they want is kind of inevitable.
Which means you should assume that all forms of law enforcement will become completely corrupt and out of control -- like happens in every other banana republic in which the police decide what is legal.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Of course, perhaps the fact that so many people throw around the term entrapment is indicitive of a general feeling of unfairness at these actions and that they should be illegal actions for the police.
Or, this is the griping of people who figured that they were going to "get away" with something and are now looking for any justification to escape the responsibility for their actions that they knew were wrong to begin with.
It's time we all sit back and remember the first rule of dealing with cops. They do not have any obligation to tell you the truth. The courts give them a pass because criminals lie.
Note: if you lie to the police, the odds are good that you will be charged, because lying to the police is a crime.
The honesty street is one way.
--AC
I have taken to quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal would bring terrible retribution.
Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.
Our government... teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number