"Friending" Your Fate

"Friending" Your Fate

Are police spending most of their time on Facebook?

For years, Police have been catching criminals the old fashioned way: wire taps and car chases. Imagine their relief when social media made their job much easier with sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The sites seems like meaningless fun to the general public, but to a police officer it's the perfect fishing spot of reckless criminals but it is also a double edged sword. When there are little to no laws protecting criminals, there are little to no laws protecting their privacy as well. Have our laws protecting our rights to privacy caught up to the ever-expanding social media? Not quite. It seems that there are still issues to be resolved when it comes to keeping people's information secure. 

Is this LEGAL?

Police have been using social media for clues into criminals' lives since they first hit the internet. And why not? It's the fastest way to from point A to point B with the click of a button. But what do Police need to do to legally obtain this information and have it stand up in court? Get a warrant? Not exactly. The Facebook Legal Terms of Statement of Rights and Responsibilities include not engaging in unlawful multi-level marketing, no bullying or harassing, and not posting anything that is a hate speech, threatening or pornographic. These rules, if broken, would raise flags and may be looked into but would still require a warrant to access messages, videos, wall posts, pictures, and location information. But even if no huge laws are broken, there's no warrant needed to access the basic information of the user such as the email and IP address.  

There was an instance "in September of 2011, a Manhattan Criminal Court judge upheld a prosecutor's subpoena for information from Twitter about an Occupy Wall Street protester arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge." Twitter says "non-public information about Twitter users is not released except as lawfully required by appropriate legal process such as a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process." But in this case the judge let the Police get the information from Twitter without making them secure a warrant. This was the first time ever that a warrant wasn't required for such an action. This is because "courts haven't issued a definite ruling on social media." ProPublica

Who does this impact?

The obvious answer is that is it impacts criminals! There are thousands of cases nation wide that would remain unsolved if criminals weren't stupid enough to brag about their winnings on social media. From my research, I've found that more criminals are caught due to their own recklessness than the Police actively seeking them out on Facebook. It was very rare that I found a case where an older individual got caught over the internet. I've found that the average age of these careless people range from teens to about 30 years old. For instance, a young man named Chris Crego was arrested for assault in 2009. He didn't show up for his sentencing and authorities found out he had fled the state via Myspace. He posted that he was in Indiana, where he was working, and his work hours. As seen here, criminals often "dig their own grave" when they get too cocky about dodging their fate. Mashable 

Another way people give themselves away is by clicking that "like" button. This is one of the very common ways an officer can access personal information instantly. There was a registered sex offender in Maryland who was on the run with his girlfriend. The cops discovered she had "liked" their Facebook page (The Tazewell Police Department). This gave them full access to her page and information. They were tracked down and both arrested. No warrant was needed because with that one click of the "like" button, she gave them permission to all of her information. Mashable.com also wrote about a convicted thief in Oregon that was sick of the court ordered therapy to avoid prison. He fled the state and on his journey from Oregon to Alabama he documented his travels on Facebook. The Police were able to successfully locate him when his late status read, "In Alabama."

Although this highly impacts the people that commit crimes, it also has a big impact on the officers themselves. What happens when criminals find out that an officer has a daughter on Facebook? They find out where the officer's family lives, where they go to school, when they're having a party, then all of a sudden, there's a problem. Since Policemen are "public figures more than ever now, the barriers between their professional and personal lives have diminished." FBI If certain individuals really wanted to, they could destroy an officer's sense of security. People have the knowledge and tools to google the officer's home address and see a satellite map of their house, leave intimidating notes at their doorstep, or even threaten their families. The FBI writes a "call to action" article to help protect their officers. They say that although it may be more cost effective to wait to deal with it after a situation happens, it would be better to be safe than sorry and to take care of the people that risk their lives for our safety. 

Will this ever get better?

There are certain steps to insure that privacy is secure. Make sure to visit the privacy settings on every social media site. Set them to your liking. Also the only people that can control what other users see are the people themselves. Don't post anything that would be incriminating. That is the biggest mistake among users. The careless posting of pictures, statuses, and comments, get criminals in trouble and then they get heated over their dumb mistake. Stop it before it even begins. This issue may never be completely solved. Now that Police have found a way to successfully beat criminals at their own game, they will not likely quit just because some feeble laws prevent them from accessing certain information. The laws around social media privacy are very weak and sooner or later they will be more defined: for good or for bad.