Facebook On Fighting Bulk Search Warrants In Court

Apparently Facebook has been fighting a court order to turn over data from 381 accounts since last year.

Of the 381 people whose accounts were the subject of these warrants, 62 were later charged in a disability fraud case. This means that no charges will be brought against more than 300 people whose data was sought by the government without prior notice to the people affected. The government also obtained gag orders that prohibited us from discussing this case and notifying any of the affected people until now.

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How cute, Facebook fighting for the privacy of its customers

Translation: This is all our information bitches! You want it? Pay us like everyone else.

LOL. They fight for your privacy, so they can SELL it to the highest bidder. Don't do us any favors FB.

This is the main risk with digital data vs physical data. If the police want to search your house or papers they (generally) must get a search warrent and serve it to you (or at least try to) so you are aware what is being searched and why. The most troubling part of the article is the courts allowing the blanket search of digital information without the notification of the person being searched.

Good for Facebook for continuing to fight this. I would imagine that once this gets to the SCOTUS it will get resolved, but it is unfortunate that it needs to go that high. Although I generally oppose sweeping government laws I think we need a federal law that designates digital data that is not publically available without special access (a website for instance vs someone's social media page that is only visible to friends) should face the same burden of the law as if they were files and papers in my house. (I won't hold my breath on anyone passing that law though)

Evil_SPanKY said:

LOL. They fight for your privacy, so they can SELL it to the highest bidder. Don't do us any favors FB.

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Although you can dispute the FB business model this particular case is symptomatic of the modern reinterpretation of the laws concerning digital data vs physical data. Because digital data is easier to get and to search than physical data, law enforcement has been pushing for easy access to digital data (often with a lower legal bar than that used if the same information had been papers or other physical media). FB has a valid complaint here that the police went on a fishing expedition with the information of nearly 400 people (only 62 of whom they actually charged with a crime). They didn't limit the scope of their search and they didn't notify the people being searched that a search was occuring. That is troubling regardless of whether the data is part of Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other number of cloud services. The unlimited search without notification (including a gag order on the service) was troubling anyway you try to spin it.

kbrickley said:

Although you can dispute the FB business model this particular case is symptomatic of the modern reinterpretation of the laws concerning digital data vs physical data. Because digital data is easier to get and to search than physical data, law enforcement has been pushing for easy access to digital data (often with a lower legal bar than that used if the same information had been papers or other physical media). FB has a valid complaint here that the police went on a fishing expedition with the information of nearly 400 people (only 62 of whom they actually charged with a crime). They didn't limit the scope of their search and they didn't notify the people being searched that a search was occuring. That is troubling regardless of whether the data is part of Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other number of cloud services. The unlimited search without notification (including a gag order on the service) was troubling anyway you try to spin it.

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Agreed with this 100,000%. The recent Supreme Court ruling re: warrants for cell phones is a nice start and hopefully we see it shift that way...but wouldn't hold my breath.

This is the main risk with digital data vs physical data. If the police want to search your house or papers they (generally) must get a search warrent and serve it to you (or at least try to) so you are aware what is being searched and why. The most troubling part of the article is the courts allowing the blanket search of digital information without the notification of the person being searched.

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And you think this "difference" stands up to a comparison of say, hard copy records from your bank or your doctor?

In fact, you are just wrong. The serve the warrant against whomever holds the information and that is who is aware of it. It hasn't changed one iota since the beginning.

Evil_SPanKY said:

LOL. They fight for your privacy, so they can SELL it to the highest bidder. Don't do us any favors FB.

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Hehehe, can't read that without hearing "That's Tron, he fights for the users!" in my head.

kbrickley said:

Although you can dispute the FB business model this particular case is symptomatic of the modern reinterpretation of the laws concerning digital data vs physical data. Because digital data is easier to get and to search than physical data, law enforcement has been pushing for easy access to digital data (often with a lower legal bar than that used if the same information had been papers or other physical media). FB has a valid complaint here that the police went on a fishing expedition with the information of nearly 400 people (only 62 of whom they actually charged with a crime). They didn't limit the scope of their search and they didn't notify the people being searched that a search was occuring. That is troubling regardless of whether the data is part of Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other number of cloud services. The unlimited search without notification (including a gag order on the service) was troubling anyway you try to spin it.

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And your completely guessing (as I am) that this IS a fishing expedition.

They are after disability frauds, and likely using pictures and such to prove their cases. Who says all 400 people are the intended recipients of the fraud case, or rather a family member or friend who also may have incrementing evidence of the fraud being committed. In that case, no wonder all weren't charged with the end crime, rather more evidence to build a case against the real fraudsters.

I don't see that as a fishing expedition, more like a targeted case gathering facts. If it was say more like 10,000 accounts, and only 62 were indicted, THAT would be a fishing expedition.

Evil_SPanKY said:

And your completely guessing (as I am) that this IS a fishing expedition.

They are after disability frauds, and likely using pictures and such to prove their cases. Who says all 400 people are the intended recipients of the fraud case, or rather a family member or friend who also may have incrementing evidence of the fraud being committed. In that case, no wonder all weren't charged with the end crime, rather more evidence to build a case against the real fraudsters.

I don't see that as a fishing expedition, more like a targeted case gathering facts. If it was say more like 10,000 accounts, and only 62 were indicted, THAT would be a fishing expedition.

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All you should need to think about to see how the request is out of line: Would it be acceptable to serve physical search warrants for "pictures and such" on 300 people without establishing probable cause to suspect those 300 people of crimes? The fact that these were cases of disability fraud makes the proposed fishing expedition less acceptable, not more; after all, we're not talking about terrorists here.

kbrickley said:

This is the main risk with digital data vs physical data. If the police want to search your house or papers they (generally) must get a search warrent and serve it to you (or at least try to) so you are aware what is being searched and why.

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That's not a digital vs physical issue though, they need a warrant to show the owner of the "property" that it is being searched. So if they want to search your home, then yeah you will know they are doing that, if they search your office at work you don't "need" to know, same with this, your facebook page is not "your property" it's the property of Facebook, so they are the only ones to know.

The digital vs. physical part comes into play that they can search through everything you have without you knowing, where as if it was your office at work you could show up in the middle of your files being rifled through, or there'd be some sort of "disturbance"

sfsuphysics said:

That's not a digital vs physical issue though, they need a warrant to show the owner of the "property" that it is being searched. So if they want to search your home, then yeah you will know they are doing that, if they search your office at work you don't "need" to know, same with this, your facebook page is not "your property" it's the property of Facebook, so they are the only ones to know.

The digital vs. physical part comes into play that they can search through everything you have without you knowing, where as if it was your office at work you could show up in the middle of your files being rifled through, or there'd be some sort of "disturbance"

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I guess, and I find the gag order on Facebook disturbing as well. Once they have collected your information I don't see why you shouldn't be informed by the owner of the data (bank, Facebook, doctor, etc) that your information was accessed. Although I can see specific cases where a temporary gag order might be in place it should be targeted and limited in scope. Even after charges were brought and none pursued for the others, there was still a gag order in place that Facebook had to go back to court to have lifted.

sfsuphysics said:

That's not a digital vs physical issue though, they need a warrant to show the owner of the "property" that it is being searched. So if they want to search your home, then yeah you will know they are doing that, if they search your office at work you don't "need" to know, same with this, your facebook page is not "your property" it's the property of Facebook, so they are the only ones to know.

The digital vs. physical part comes into play that they can search through everything you have without you knowing, where as if it was your office at work you could show up in the middle of your files being rifled through, or there'd be some sort of "disturbance"

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There's an issue of "expectation of privacy," though. You may be well aware that anonymized data is being shared by Facebook with business partners while marking all your photos "private" or "shared with friends" or whatever. And, as noted, with the gag order a person being searched in this fashion doesn't even have a chance of knowing that their information has been collected by the police.

I think this dovetails nicely with the cell phone issue. For example, an Android smartphone user is likely storing a large portion of their critical/personal data with Google by way of backups. A warrant served on Google in that case shouldn't be allowed to bypass the 4th amendment protection every person in the US is supposed to enjoy.