Police Officially Using Facebook
Student Activist | 11.06.2008 22:07 | Globalisation | Other Press | Repression | World
Now is the time for ALL activists to either get off facebook or to be very careful about the information they put up.
The Police are officially, openly, using facebook.
The Police are officially, openly, using facebook.
Police force's Facebook app raises privacy concerns
Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk
Published: 21 Apr 2008 15:13 BST
Last week, Greater Manchester Police became the first UK police force to establish a presence on Facebook. According to one privacy advocate, it is a move that raises significant privacy issues.
Greater Manchester Police established an application called GMP Updates on Facebook, providing users with crime news, appeals and missing-persons stories.
Individual stories can be shared with a user's contacts and users can add comments to the feed. The application also links users to an external website where they can anonymously submit information on crimes or view YouTube videos related to ongoing investigations.
Greater Manchester Police has estimated that seven million Facebook users reside in the UK. Within a day of launch, 750 people had added the application, the police force said.
"Greater Manchester Police is proud to be the first force in the country to use this new technology, and it demonstrates our commitment to exploring all avenues available to us to help fight and detect crime," said assistant chief constable Rob Taylor, in a statement.
Greater Manchester Police pitched the tool as a way of helping raise public awareness about crimes, and encouraging users to submit relevant information. However, users who add the application to their Facebook profile may be sharing more information about themselves with the police than they realise, according to Guilherme Roschke, a fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
In a research note, Roschke pointed out that Facebook applications have access to far more information than ordinary users do.
Aaron Greenspan warns that Facebook is sacrificing user privacy on the altar of hyper growth.
According to Facebook's "platform application terms of use", when a user adds an application, that application gets access to a long list of different types of "Facebook site information", which could include political views, relationship interests, copies of photos in Facebook photo albums, a list of user IDs mapped to Facebook contacts, a social timeline, name, birthday, gender, current location and other information.
Applications can access this data even if it's been marked as not viewable via Facebook networks such as those relating to geographic area or education, Roschke noted. Photos are viewable by applications even if users have restricted which of their contacts can see the photos.
"Law enforcement use of applications will significantly expand the reach of what law enforcement can see, and also provides a more surreptitious viewing ability," Roschke wrote.
He pointed out that applications such as the GMP Updates can, by default, see what the user sees on Facebook, including information about contacts. Contacts can opt out of this sharing but, by default, it includes information such as education history, work history, profile status, photos, groups and relationship status.
"It's not enough to carefully tune your privacy vis-a-vis other Facebook users. You also have to avoid adding in applications like the GMP Updates," Roschke wrote.
Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk
Published: 21 Apr 2008 15:13 BST
Last week, Greater Manchester Police became the first UK police force to establish a presence on Facebook. According to one privacy advocate, it is a move that raises significant privacy issues.
Greater Manchester Police established an application called GMP Updates on Facebook, providing users with crime news, appeals and missing-persons stories.
Individual stories can be shared with a user's contacts and users can add comments to the feed. The application also links users to an external website where they can anonymously submit information on crimes or view YouTube videos related to ongoing investigations.
Greater Manchester Police has estimated that seven million Facebook users reside in the UK. Within a day of launch, 750 people had added the application, the police force said.
"Greater Manchester Police is proud to be the first force in the country to use this new technology, and it demonstrates our commitment to exploring all avenues available to us to help fight and detect crime," said assistant chief constable Rob Taylor, in a statement.
Greater Manchester Police pitched the tool as a way of helping raise public awareness about crimes, and encouraging users to submit relevant information. However, users who add the application to their Facebook profile may be sharing more information about themselves with the police than they realise, according to Guilherme Roschke, a fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
In a research note, Roschke pointed out that Facebook applications have access to far more information than ordinary users do.
Aaron Greenspan warns that Facebook is sacrificing user privacy on the altar of hyper growth.
According to Facebook's "platform application terms of use", when a user adds an application, that application gets access to a long list of different types of "Facebook site information", which could include political views, relationship interests, copies of photos in Facebook photo albums, a list of user IDs mapped to Facebook contacts, a social timeline, name, birthday, gender, current location and other information.
Applications can access this data even if it's been marked as not viewable via Facebook networks such as those relating to geographic area or education, Roschke noted. Photos are viewable by applications even if users have restricted which of their contacts can see the photos.
"Law enforcement use of applications will significantly expand the reach of what law enforcement can see, and also provides a more surreptitious viewing ability," Roschke wrote.
He pointed out that applications such as the GMP Updates can, by default, see what the user sees on Facebook, including information about contacts. Contacts can opt out of this sharing but, by default, it includes information such as education history, work history, profile status, photos, groups and relationship status.
"It's not enough to carefully tune your privacy vis-a-vis other Facebook users. You also have to avoid adding in applications like the GMP Updates," Roschke wrote.
Student Activist
e-mail:
studentandactivist@gmail.com
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
more evidence
11.06.2008 22:44
British Police Use Facebook
*Student Arrested Using Facebook
*Vancouver Police have their own page on Facebook
*Police using facebook to congratulate "copper" who ran over cyclist
ex-facebooker
welcome to the future
12.06.2008 00:28
Get underground or else you deserve to get caught!
anonymous
Thanks
12.06.2008 02:27
Facebook was set up by some very shady venture capitalists with links to the CIA.
It is a data mining technology.
It is surprising how many activists are on Facebook.
My worry is that they are putting the safety of extended activist networks in danger.
According to the Privacy Policy, nothing is ever "removed" from your profile so if, for example, someone has tagged you in a photo and you ask them to remove it, when the police or whoever are looking for that information they will still be able to find it.
There is no such thing as Privacy on facebook. Read it for yourself
"We may use information about you that we collect from other sources, including but not limited to newspapers and Internet sources such as blogs, instant messaging services, Facebook Platform developers and other users of Facebook, to supplement your profile."
I find the "including but not limited to" bit especially eerie - what else are they using? Bugs? Phone tapping?
Later on it says:
"Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook. Where you make use of the communication features of the service to share information with other individuals on Facebook, however, (e.g., sending a personal message to another Facebook user) you generally cannot remove such communications."
They keep all messages you send forever. Why? What are they using these messages for?
Facebook is a perfect "market research" tool for consumer capitalism, why give a system you are trying to bring down, information that it needs in order to develop "more effective" marketing?
Activists off facebook!
F*%K Facebook
.
12.06.2008 13:51
Get underground or else you deserve to get caught!"
Why the hell would Anarchists not use the web?? If we want to spread our ideas and actually build the strength that we need for a revolution then we have to spread information on our ideas far and wide. the web is a great tool for that.
You do realize that being an Anarchist is not actually illegal don't you. Anyone that uses the web to organize something illegal is obviously a dumb ass and deserves to be caught but most anarchist activity is in no way illegal. We organize in our communities, at work and in our lives in general. People do not, to the best of my knowledge organise actions on Facebook or Myspace but use them as a tool to help spread ideas and information.
Facebook is rather creepy what with its origins and who it has links to but ffs it's not as if Anarchism is even a threat at the moment.
I'm sure lots of folk use web encryption like gpg for communications as it just makes sense to keep your mail private.
Oh and as for freenet, I've been trying it out and it's really slow and clunky and doesn't offer anything but anonymity which I get easy enough online with tor/privoxy should I wish and not using my real name. My mama didn't name me miserablist you know.
miserablist