Cooperating with Law Enforcement in Social Networking

IT News
and Read Write Web are reporting that the Australian Federal Police
would like a report button and a direct liaison with police departments
worldwide in an effort to have people report on bad guys that are on
social networks. Social networks are an alluring place for people to
hang out, both good and bad, with the preponderance of people on the
good side of things. However, as we connect, make friends, and meet new
people we might run into people we do not agree with or think they are
doing something illegal or shady.

Read Write Web states:

Last week, Facebook and the AFP, as well as other
social media companies and other international law enforcement, spoke
at a meeting arranged by the U.S. Justice Department. The meeting was
called to address conflicts between U.S. companies and international
law agencies. Australian Federal Police High Tech Crime Centre
assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan told Australia’s iTnews that he had
requested that Facebook hire a compliance officer, someone to serve as
an “international law enforcement presence…in Australia, a point of
contact” with the police. They are also being asked to install a button
on the Australian version of the site that will allow users to report
people to the police. Source: Read Write Web

Many governments regardless of their form or format rely on the
process of people fact many tyrannies rely on the same process, people
telling the police about things that are going on in their local area
that the police might not be aware of. Even democracies rely on the
same process, we all need to report crime when we find it, and we think
that law enforcement is not aware of the issue. This has been a time
honored tradition across many different forms of government, not just
tyrannies, but democracies as well.

The problem is that we all know these kinds of processes are
abused. We report to the police the neighbors that we do not like for
whatever reason. The problem is not so much that they are doing this
(in my opinion) it is that this is a system that is rife for abuse.
When dealing with international sensibilities, if I post a picture that
someone elsewhere in the world thinks is porn and there is a simple
“report offensive images” or “report offensive speech” the level of
data is going to be impossible to manage. International sensibilities
on what are permissible, what is not permissible given a particular
society and culture are going to be problematic for any social
networking site. Any site that is international in scope will have this
issue.

Child predator’s aside, the simple fact of being able to report
anyone for anything is going to destroy the ability of law enforcement
to do anything. The data inundation will be on the order of a biblical
event, with no way to manage, and no way to tell if the data is
actionable or not. We are dealing with people, and people are often
messy, prone to agendas, and prone to revenge for any reason. Let alone
the idea that a Facebook account can have its credentials hacked, or
malware traversing the social networks and law enforcement I do not
think has a real idea of what they are asking for. Orwellian ideas
aside, the simple inundation of data is going to cripple law
enforcement. We have seen this with the TSA and the no fly list; people
still slip through the cracks.

If this is an actual mission, the ability to monitor people for
every interaction that they have on a social network based on what
other people think is appropriate and what is not, law enforcement is
in for a very rude awakening without the ability to filter
non-actionable non-illegal activity from activity that is illegal.
People are simply going to report everything they object to, regardless
of if it is a true crime. And let us not forget the hacktivists, how
much does anyone want to bet that people are simply going to hit the
button to overwhelm law enforcement anyways? We all know that is going
to happen, it is a given, people will simply abuse the system,
regardless of the system in place.

While it is interesting to ask, and the Patriot Act and other
government rules and regulations require a certain amount of data
retention and reporting, this new process being proposed is going to
overwhelm law enforcement as much as any other mass reporting system
will. This might be one of those times where government did not quite
realize what they were asking for, or how they are going to manage the
flood of data that will be forthcoming. The data will come, will law
enforcement be able to make sense of it, or truly find the criminals
amongst us?

(Cross-posted @IT Toolbox )