FBI prowls on Facebook – will it prove effective?

This is truly taking undercover investigation to a whole new level, but will it work? Here’s why I think that this isn’t a great idea:

1. The success rate of catching criminals is pretty small, considering that Facebook profiles are private, and as opposed to chat rooms that draw “similar” kinds of people, social networking revolves around a messaging/talking to a larger audience. More often than not, the hundreds of friends in your friend list are privy to most of the information, and it is unlikely that any individual would boast about/confide in their entire friend list.

2. Most Facebook individual profiles are private – and with increasing privacy protection and continuous warnings about the dangers of digital identity and content theft, social networking sites and the Facebook audience is getting more and more prudent with how and who they share their information with.

3. The cat’s out of the bag! Even IF Facebook could’ve been a viable tool in the FBI agent’s pocket, public articles such as this make me think that criminals on facebook are going to start being a lot more careful about how/who they talk to.

4. Privacy laws: Going “undercover” in the digital world, especially on networking sites violates many rules outlined in Facebook’s terms and conditions of service, including but not limited to, the explicit forbidding of users creating a fake identity. Should an exception be made in special cases (as with the FBI)? This is up to debate, but personally, I view this as an invasion of privacy.

I don’t doubt the fact that Facebook could be useful in nabbing criminals in a small number of cases, but it most certainly isn’t going to be a revolutionary tool for the criminal justice system, or replace the other tools in an FBI Agent’s arsenal.

Source: PR Associates Blog (2009). How much is too much information in social media. Retrieved from http://blog.prassociates.ca/?p=316

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