Washington – U.S. law-enforcement agencies are increasingly obtaining warrants to search Facebook, often gaining detailed access to users’ accounts without their knowledge.
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Many of the warrants requested a laundry list of personal data such as messages, status updates, links to videos and photographs, calendars of future and past events, “Wall postings” and “rejected Friend requests.”
Federal agencies seeking the warrants include the FBI, DEA and ICE, and the investigations range from arson to rape to terrorism.
The Facebook search warrants typically demand a user’s “Neoprint” and “Photoprint” — terms that Facebook has used to describe a detailed package of profile and photo information that is not even available to users themselves.
These terms appear in manuals for law enforcement agencies on how to request data from Facebook. The manuals, posted on various public-advocacy websites, appear to have been prepared by Facebook, although a spokesman for the company declined to confirm their authenticity.
In a telephone interview, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan, declined to say how many warrants had been served on the company. He said Facebook is sensitive to user privacy and that it regularly pushes back against law-enforcement “fishing expeditions.”
Some constitutional-law experts said the Facebook searches may not have been challenged because the defendants – not to mention their “friends” or others whose pages might have been viewed as part of an investigation — never knew about them.
By law, neither Facebook nor the government is obliged to inform a user when an account is subject to a search by law enforcement, though prosecutors are required to disclose material evidence to a defendant.
Twitter and several other social-media sites have formally adopted a policy to notify users when law enforcement asks to search their profile.
If that will help solve crime, so be it. Not hiding anything!!!!
Two sentences you don’t wanna hear: “I’m here from the government. I’m here to help.”