Don’t be confused by the headline. There is no implication here that Facebook has done anything wrong. When served with a warrant, they complied. Thomas Brewster reports:
Despite attempts to play down the use of Facebook amongst Capitol Hill rioters, the social media giant is furnishing the feds with data on users who took part in the siege, including their private messages, after calls from lawmakers to do so.
In a criminal complaint filed against New York resident Christopher M. Kelly on Wednesday, a search warrant on his Facebook account was revealed. After being tipped off about Facebook posts from an account belonging to Kelly containing images of him at the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, the FBI sought his private messages, as well as his linked IP address, phone number and Gmail address.
Read more on Forbes.
h/t, Joe Cadillic
I disagree with your comment, “There is no implication here that Facebook has done anything wrong. When served with a warrant, they complied.”
Facebook could have fought the warrant, but sadly when it comes to privacy concerns Facebook could care less.
I am not arguing over the morality of exposing Capitol rioters. My argument is about corporate willingness to turn over private information of 1000’s of people without a fight.
In my opinion it’s a much more complicate issue.
The article doesn’t say whether FB notified their users or not about the existence of the warrant so that the users could move to quash. Maybe that’s what we should ask about, because I don’t know what FB’s policies and TOS say about these situations, do you? But given what happened on Jan 6 and the risk that it could happen again in the immediate future, do you really want FB or any platform fighting a warrant and not cooperating with law enforcement?
“But given what happened on Jan 6 and the risk that it could happen again in the immediate future, do you really want FB or any platform fighting a warrant and not cooperating with law enforcement?”
Would be interested to hear your position on mandatory encryption back doors. I think I may have underestimated your support for LE surveillance.
I remain firmly opposed to mandatory encryption backdoors. And I do NOT support reverse warrants or sweeping orders on surveillance. I want LE to have to meet a probable cause standard to obtain information. I’m not talking about a warrant for “everyone in the vicinity of.” I think that’s wrong and should be unconstitutional. I was talking about a warrant for info on a specific individual, and if LE really meets the probable cause standard and the court issues the warrant, I wouldn’t necessarily hope that the platform would fight every single warrant — and in some cases, if there was imminent danger– would we even want them to fight it?