Facebook and Crime
Facebook, everyone’s using it,
tweens, teens, parents, criminals, and even police. In fact, police are now starting to use social
networking as a tool to catch big mouthed law breakers who choose to brag about
their crimes on Facebook. For example, Melvin Colon was accused of murder, as
well as drug and weapon related crimes. He posted pictures on Facebook of him
holding up gang signs and posing “incriminating posts” which police were able
to access through one of his friend’s accounts. When Colon said it was a
violation of his privacy a judge ruled that he lost that right when he began to
share it to all of his friends on a social networking site.
Police
are able to navigate their way through Facebook by learning how to use the
site, and by finding loopholes for getting into suspects private information.
They use friend’s not so private settings to access information that they need
to solve crimes. Police also create fake accounts to befriend suspects and look
into their information. If needed, they can get a warrant to search the
information, directly from the social networking site. If there is an emergency
of a major threat they can submit an emergency request form to access the
information immediately.
Some
people, like Colon’s attorneys, argue that accessing information from a social networking
site is a violation of the 4th Amendment and claiming that it’s an
unreasonable search and seizure. A judge, however, declared that this was not
the case because the information was shared with his friends. Police can get information
from a suspect’s friends in person, and can also get it when you post on a
third party site such as Facebook.
I think
this is a great tool for law enforcement to use because if someone is careless
enough to put it online then they deserve to be caught. Everyone knows you don’t
put anything online that you don’t want the world to know. What it comes down
to is if it’s online, ANYONE can access it.
08/31/12
Well written, easy to read. You have a good summary of the article. Your analysis is lacking. Remember that the analysis is supposed to be value-free; try to avoid giving your opinion on the matter. This article is also US-centric, and the articles are supposed to be global in scope. This has global implications, but you didn’t write around what they were.
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