

Facebook confidential "law enforcement guide" - amnigos
http://info.publicintelligence.net/Facebook2010.pdf

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

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hammock
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.

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montagg
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.

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silverlight
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?

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jrockway
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.

~~~
bostonpete
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...

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jsavimbi
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.

~~~
zalew
> 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-...](http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/wikileaks-founder-
facebook-is-the-most-appalling-spy-machine-that-has-ever-been-invented/)

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

~~~
rdl
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...).

