Facebook confidential "law enforcement guide" | Hacker News Reader

Facebook confidential "law enforcement guide"

info.publicintelligence.net

57 pointsamnigos13 comments

Summary: It's the same as any other vendor's law enforcement guide. Nothing really revelatory here.

It's interesting for those who have never seen one before, and it's also useful to see exactly the types of information they are handing over.

This looks totally normal and sounds really good faith. It's not like Facebook can say no to a warrant, but they make it clear they're only going to give up your information if 1) there's an emergency, and they have a good faith belief that not preserving the information will result in bodily harm, and 2) if they get an official warrant.

Considering they need to have this kind of thing in place to exist at all, it looks to me like they've done a good job separating good and bad faith reasons for granting access to data.

One thing I don't understand (and I have no experience in this arena so forgive my ignorance): why is there no mention of a court order, warrant, etc? Is it really just enough for an officer to sign their name to this form and get this information? Or is that something that's not in the scope of this document, it's just assumed that officers will know they need some sort of warrant to access this information?

Read the portion under "Types of Requests"

Facebook can give away your information for any reason they want. A warrant exists to compel them to give it away. If they are willing to give it away without a warrant, then legally, that's fine.

I assume that depends on their terms of service. I'm guessing that their terms don't leave the door open for them to share your information for any reason whatsoever. That said, I'm sure their terms don't indicate that they're require a court order either...

Sounds like a lot of work. Why doesn't Facebook just build an admin portal so that law enforcement types can register themselves and then just be able to "star" a user/group page on which they'd like information, fill out a short form for details (checkboxes, javascript date range, radio buttons, maybe a drop-down select) and submit it to the queue? This way, Fb engineers could issue them a help ticket and track the case along with the man, online through the portal without the need for pesky phone calls or emails.

Well, if the US Gov suddenly invests in FaceBook, we will have an idea as to what is coming down the road for privacy.

What you are proposing is an insane privacy violation and facilitates law enforcement just being able to 'watch for the sake of watching'...

My (joke) proposal for building a web portal for lazy criminal justice types is an insane privacy violation? Only if you could actually get them to find it and actually use it. Maybe I'll put hot, naked chicks on the home page like Pud used to.

Something much better already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

> Why doesn't Facebook just build an admin portal so that law enforcement types can register themselves and then just be able to "star" a user/group page on which they'd like information, fill out a short form for details (checkboxes, javascript date range, radio buttons, maybe a drop-down select) and submit it to the queue?

isn't your idea similar to what Assange is talking about? http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/wikileaks-founder-...

It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface they have developed for US Intelligence to use.

Actually, for intelligence (vs. law enforcement), you'd just take tapes (well, SANs, probably) of raw data, with a custom search interface.

It would be unacceptable to an intelligence agency to have to ask for individual records in many cases; the list of names they're looking for would leak a lot of information. They want raw data so they can run their own queries in-house.

Same thing applies to any other provider. Western Union used to deliver actual tapes to the CIA daily. It's either done by the company officially, or by an employee at the company, usually an ex-military/government person working in the security department or otherwise placed to have access.

Sometimes intelligence agencies set up "captive service providers" who bid exceptionally low to win access to juicy data streams (Israel and phone billing...).

Well, here's one reason why not: http://www.schneier.com/essay-306.html

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