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How US Government Spies Use Facebook

The US Department of Justice this week released slides from a presentation deck titled Obtaining and Using Evidence from Social Networking Sites. The document was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The DoJ presentation describes Facebook as much more co-operative with law enforcement requests for user information than Twitter and MySpace are. It also explains to officers what the advantages of going undercover on social networking sites are. This is a very interesting read about social networking sites that many of us use on a daily basis and how they interact with the government.

MySpace and Twitter, on the other hand, are described differently. MySpace "requires a search warrant for private messages/bulletins less than 181 days old." Twitter "will not preserve data without legal process," has a "stated policy of producing data only in response to legal process" and has no Law Enforcement Guide (or spying manual, as some parties call such documents). Wouldn't you like your social network to say no before it says yes and require a warrant before handing over information to law enforcement? We reached out to Facebook this evening about the government claim that it was unusually co-operative but have not yet received a response.

New York Times Technology News

Posted by | Wed, Mar 17, 2010 - 11:08 AM