A Peculiar Blog

So says an article on Chicagotribune.com in which they point out what should be obvious to anyone.  Now that social media such as facebook, myspace, twitter and dozens more are such a huge part of most people’s lives, the feds are spending more and more time watching them.

Not only that but they’re also creating false profiles and connecting with people, searching out events, reading tweets, status messages, friends lists and so on looking for giveaway clues in careless tweets, status messages and pictures that will give them the proof they need for an arrest.

So that pic of the time you covered yourself in wrinkle cream pretending to be a ghost is up there for federal scrutiny along with the dumb criminal that posts a pic of him with the really expensive car that he bought financed by his drug sales or whatever.

On the one hand I can see this as a necessary step in the growth of law enforcement’s tactics.  On the other, there are entirely too many opportunities for this stuff to be misused and abused.

Then there’s the fact that most social networking sites have strict policies against making false accounts or providing false information to create an account.  When does it reach the point where they need to get a warrant before creating the account?  Will the account be deleted once it has served it’s purpose or will it be maintained and re-used on more cases?

The moral of this story is: Never post something online that you wouldn’t want the entire world to know.

[tags]social networking, feds, criminal investigation, undercover feds, fbi[/tags]