Skip Navigation | HOME | UK Indymedia | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Support Us

manchester Indymedia

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.

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.

Student Activist
- e-mail: studentandactivist@gmail.com

Download this article in pdf format >>

Email this article to someone >>

Submit an addition or make a quick comment on this article >>

Comments

Hide the following 4 comments

more evidence

11.06.2008 22:44

ex-facebooker


welcome to the future

12.06.2008 00:28

Why isn't anarchism on the internet more underground anyway? Why not use something like Freenet and password protected IRC channels? I find it pretty depressing that the kind of people I thought would be the cyberpunks back in the 90s (networked anarchists) are using the web's most shit mainstream sites (facebook)

Get underground or else you deserve to get caught!

anonymous


Thanks

12.06.2008 02:27

For those who haven't see this  http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU

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  http://www.facebook.com/policy.php clearly states:

"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

"Why isn't anarchism on the internet more underground anyway? Why not use something like Freenet and password protected IRC channels? I find it pretty depressing that the kind of people I thought would be the cyberpunks back in the 90s (networked anarchists) are using the web's most shit mainstream sites (facebook)

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


Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Manchester Topics

Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Manchester Actions 2010

Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands

Manchester Actions 2009

COP15 Climate Summit 2009
G20 London Summit
Guantánamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
University Occupations for Gaza

Manchester Actions 2008

2008 Days Of Action For Autonomous Spaces
Campaign against Carmel-Agrexco
Climate Camp 2008
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Smash EDO
Stop Sequani Animal Testing
Stop the BNP's Red White and Blue festival

Manchester Actions 2007

Climate Camp 2007
DSEi 2007
G8 Germany 2007
Mayday 2007
No Border Camp 2007

Manchester Actions 2006

April 2006 No Borders Days of Action
Art and Activism Caravan 2006
Climate Camp 2006
Faslane
French CPE uprising 2006
G8 Russia 2006
Lebanon War 2006
March 18 Anti War Protest
Mayday 2006
Oaxaca Uprising
Refugee Week 2006
Rossport Solidarity
SOCPA
Transnational Day of Action Against Migration Controls
WSF 2006

Manchester Actions 2005

DSEi 2005
G8 2005
WTO Hong Kong 2005

Manchester Actions 2004

European Social Forum
FBI Server Seizure
May Day 2004
Venezuela

Manchester Actions 2003

Bush 2003
DSEi 2003
Evian G8
May Day 2003
No War F15
Saloniki Prisoner Support
Thessaloniki EU
WSIS 2003

Languages

english

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech