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Facebook Is 'Teeming' With Fake Accounts Created By Undercover Cops (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes NBC News:
Police officers around the country, in departments large and small, working for federal, state and local agencies, use undercover Facebook accounts to watch protesters, track gang members, lure child predators and snare thieves, according to court records, police trainers and officers themselves. Some maintain several of these accounts at a time. The tactic violates Facebook's terms of use, and the company says it disables fake accounts whenever it discovers them. But that is about all it can do: Fake accounts are not against the law, and the information gleaned by the police can be used as evidence in criminal and civil cases. Investigators know this, which is why the accounts continue to flourish.
"Every high-tech crime unit has one," said an officer who uses an undercover account to monitor gang members and drug dealers in New Jersey and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid having the account exposed or shut down. "It's not uncommon, but we don't like to talk about it too much." The proliferation of fake Facebook accounts and other means of social media monitoring -- including the use of software to crunch data about people's online activity -- illustrates a policing "revolution" that has allowed authorities to not only track people but also map out their networks, said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel at New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice....
Judges in New Jersey and Delaware have upheld investigators' use of fake social media profiles. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Cincinnati Police Department and the Chicago Police Department have publicly boasted of using undercover Facebook accounts in cases against accused child predators, gangs and gun traffickers. Following an outcry after a Drug Enforcement Administration agent created a fake Facebook account in a suspect's name to catch members of a drug ring, the Department of Justice promised in 2014 to review the agency's policies -- but the department did not respond to multiple requests to say what has changed. Several law enforcement agencies, including the New York Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center, have policies that explicitly allow the creation of fake profiles, with some conditions -- including obtaining prior approval from a superior and limiting interactions with targets.... [P]olice agencies have been able to keep undercover accounts for years without Facebook discovering them.
After one successful ACLU lawsuit this August, a Memphis activist discovered that his local police department had assembled 22,000 pages about him and his friends.
"Every high-tech crime unit has one," said an officer who uses an undercover account to monitor gang members and drug dealers in New Jersey and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid having the account exposed or shut down. "It's not uncommon, but we don't like to talk about it too much." The proliferation of fake Facebook accounts and other means of social media monitoring -- including the use of software to crunch data about people's online activity -- illustrates a policing "revolution" that has allowed authorities to not only track people but also map out their networks, said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, senior counsel at New York University School of Law's Brennan Center for Justice....
Judges in New Jersey and Delaware have upheld investigators' use of fake social media profiles. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Cincinnati Police Department and the Chicago Police Department have publicly boasted of using undercover Facebook accounts in cases against accused child predators, gangs and gun traffickers. Following an outcry after a Drug Enforcement Administration agent created a fake Facebook account in a suspect's name to catch members of a drug ring, the Department of Justice promised in 2014 to review the agency's policies -- but the department did not respond to multiple requests to say what has changed. Several law enforcement agencies, including the New York Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center, have policies that explicitly allow the creation of fake profiles, with some conditions -- including obtaining prior approval from a superior and limiting interactions with targets.... [P]olice agencies have been able to keep undercover accounts for years without Facebook discovering them.
After one successful ACLU lawsuit this August, a Memphis activist discovered that his local police department had assembled 22,000 pages about him and his friends.
"Criminal impersonation is a crime
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The above doesn't apply to police working in an undercover capacity.
Lots of facebook accounts and groups are private, i.e. set to "friends only" or "group members only" - so I, in my smug absence of a facebook account, can't see what those people have posted - it's not really "public" - more like a private room at a bar. To become a 'friend" or gain group membership, the police are clearly lying. It's up to a court to decide how bad that is, when balanced against capture and conviction of offenders.
People too stupid to perceive this will be caught - the smarter ones will figure out how to screen friends and members more closely, or will figure out ways to poison or encode the information posted.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
If you post illegal stuff to Facebook...you might be a moron. Out of the gene pool, please.
Not quite out of the gene pool, but in the UK one guy just came out of court and posted on FaceBook: "I think I've got away with it." That was shown to the judge who took it as a confession.
Where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI agents.
Completely irrelevant. If I pretend to be you, that's impersonation. If I assume a completely fake identity, that is not impersonation.
Do you really think that when Patrick Stewart plays Jean Luc Picard, he's breaking the law?
To some extent I agree, but this still falls under investigation. Protesting is fine. Destroying property or attacking people is not.
In many (most?) cases when there is a planned protest, the police and protest group(s) will coordinate with each other to lay down ground rules. The people get to peacefully protest, and the police's job is made easier since they don't have to worry (as much) about people being stupid.
As we know, while the protesters may be peaceful, there are those anarchists who think it's funny to destroy someone else's property when there's a protest march. Those are the ones police are looking for as well the white supremacists and the like who openly state they're going to attack certain people.
When did the discussion become about entrapment? I thought it was about impersonation.
Ah, yes, when you're losing the argument, change the subject.
The CFAA specifically says:
This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, or intelligence activity of a law enforcement agency of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or of an intelligence agency of the United States.
So, no.
Maybe you should try reading the actual law , particularly section (f), and maybe you will see where your brilliant analysis falls apart.
All are perfectly legal when done by authorities.
Except when they aren't?
Ezekiel 23:20
Excellent tip. Could you explain how? I would like to try. But my understanding is that getting a single account deleted is already quite hard to accomplish for most people. How do you delete Facebook in its entirety?
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
"Fake accounts are not against the law..."
Pretty sure they are in the USA Criminal Code: 18 U.S. Code 1030 - "Fraud and related activity in connection with computers" (a)(2)(C) "Whoever intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains information from any protected computer..." and the term "protected computer" is defined in 1030 (e)(2)(B) as "a computer which is used in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States."
If you are using a fictional identity to register with a members-only website, then you are certainly using "a protected computer without authorization," since nearly every internet route (not LAN) is an interstate communication, making almost every webserver a "protected computer," and the fictional identity is authorized for access but you are not that fictional person therefore you are not authorized when you claim to be someone you aren't.
Just because you don't have an FB account, don't feel safe. Someone may be impersonating you.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...
https://www.timesunion.com/new...
Go to Google search and enter the search string
"Your Name" site:facebook.com
Replace "Your Name" with your actual name. If your name is common, you'll obviously get some false positives. A similar search can be done for LinkedIn, MySpace, whatever by inserting the appropriate domain in the "site:" reference..
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user