Feds mine Facebook for info
DETROIT — Federal investigators in Detroit have
taken the rare step of obtaining search warrants that give them
access to Facebook accounts of suspected criminals.
The warrants let investigators view photographs, email
addresses, cell phone numbers, lists of friends who might double as
partners in crime, and see GPS locations that could help disprove
alibis.
There have been a few dozen search warrants for Facebook
accounts nationwide since May 2009, including three approved
recently by a federal magistrate judge in Detroit, according to a
Detroit News analysis of publicly available federal court
records.
The trend raises privacy and evidentiary concerns in a rapidly
evolving digital age and illustrates the potential law-enforcement
value of social media, experts said.
Locally, Facebook accounts have been seized by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and FBI to investigate
more than a dozen gang members and accused bank robber Anthony
Wilson of Detroit.
“To be honest with you, it bothers me,” said Wilson, 25, who was
indicted Tuesday on bank robbery charges after the FBI compared
Facebook photos with images taken from a bank surveillance video.
“Facebook could have let me know what was going on. Instead, I got
my door kicked down, and all of a sudden I’m in handcuffs.”
Federal investigators defend the practice. “With technology
today, we would be crazy not to look at every avenue,” said Special
Agent Donald Dawkins, spokesman with the ATF in Detroit.
The FBI suspected Wilson was behind a string of bank robberies
across Metro Detroit that netted more than $6,300. Special Agent
Juan Herrera said an informant told the FBI about Wilson’s Facebook
account. It was registered under the name “Anthony Mrshowoff
Wilson.”
In several photos on Facebook, Wilson was wearing a blue
baseball hat and blue hooded sweatshirt, both featuring a Polo
emblem. That’s the same outfit the FBI said the suspect wore when
he stole $390 from a Bank of America Branch in Grosse Pointe Woods
on Nov. 26, according to federal court records.
His Facebook photos also included one in which Wilson wore a red
Philadelphia Phillies baseball hat, which the FBI said Wilson
donned while robbing $1,363 from a PNC Bank branch in St. Clair
Shores on Dec. 21, according to court records.
On Jan. 26, U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia Morgan gave approval
for the FBI to seize information from Wilson’s Facebook account.
The warrant was executed within four hours.
Facebook gave the FBI Wilson’s contact information, including
birth date, cell phone number, friends, incoming and outgoing
messages, and photos.
Wilson was charged in a criminal complaint Feb. 7 and indicted
Tuesday on five bank robbery charges. He is free on a $10,000
unsecured bond.
“I’m innocent until proven guilty,” Wilson told The Detroit
News. “They’re basically going off my clothes. Ralph Lauren is a
popular clothing line.”
He’s since updated his Facebook photo. Wilson swapped the blue
Polo hat and blue Polo sweatshirt for white ones featuring the
iconic Polo horse.
Despite the search warrants, his Facebook information page was
still public Thursday.
Technology challenging
Morgan, the federal magistrate judge, also approved two search
warrant requests from the ATF late last year and in February to
search the accounts of at least 16 people suspected of belonging to
a Detroit area gang. The affidavit justifying the search remains
sealed in federal court.
Even with the access, investigators are having a hard time
keeping up with high-tech crooks. In February, an FBI official
testified before a House subcommittee about the difficulty
accessing electronic communications on social media sites and email
even with court approval.
“The FBI and other government agencies are facing a potentially
widening gap between our legal authority to intercept electronic
communications pursuant to court order and our practical ability to
actually intercept those communications,” FBI General Counsel
Valerie Caproni testified.
Monitoring real-time Web-based conversations is particularly
difficult, she said.
The FBI uses the term “Going Dark” to label the gap between
having the authority to access electronic communications and the
Internet service providers’ capability to gather the information.
“This gap poses a growing threat to public safety,” Caproni
testified.
Concerns over privacy
Information gleaned from the Internet raises constitutional and
evidentiary issues that must be considered, including privacy and
the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, said Chief
U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen, who also is an evidence
professor at Wayne State University. Evidence obtained from the
Internet and social media sites also raises issues about whether
the information can be authenticated, he said.
“The Internet is the next frontier for the development of Fourth
Amendment law,” Rosen said, referring to the amendment protecting
against unreasonable searches and seizures.
A Facebook spokesman said the company receives a “significant
volume of third-party data requests” that are reviewed individually
for “legal sufficiency.”
“We do not comment publicly on data requests, even when we
disclose the request to the user. We have this policy to respect
privacy and avoid the risk that even acknowledging the existence of
a request could wrongly harm the reputation of an individual,” said
Andrew Noyes, Facebook manager of public policy communications. “We
never turn over ’content’ records in response to U.S. legal process
unless that process is a search warrant reviewed by a judge. We are
required to regularly push back against overbroad requests for user
records, but in most cases we are able to convince the party
issuing legal process to withdraw the overbroad request, but if
they do not, we fight the matter in court (and have a history of
success in those cases.)”
Spokeswomen for the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI declined to
discuss techniques used by investigators.
It is unclear exactly how many search warrants have been
executed for Facebook accounts. But requests - in Maryland , New
York , North Carolina , Virginia , California , Pennsylvania ,
Montana and Alabama - come amid a backlash from users who
complained too much of their personal information was being
disclosed .
The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation , a
digital civil liberties organization based in San Francisco,
launched a campaign recently to encourage Facebook and others to
disclose when and how often law-enforcement agencies request user
account information.
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