State Court Says Cop Posing As A Facebook Friend To Snag Criminal Evidence Isn't A 4th Amendment Violation June 6, 2018 https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...l-evidence-isnt-4th-amendment-violation.shtml
I am all for protecting privacy but when a cop poses as a friend to look for evidence on someone when it is more than reasonable to suspect they are commiting a crime, that is police work the way it should be done.
Posting pictures of illegal stuff on Facebook, without anonymization, is stupid beyond words. Also, it's foolish to trust people. Especially people that you know only online. A key aspect of compartmentalization is never sharing meatspace stuff online. And vice versa.
I agree, but only on suspects. He was convicted felon, so I may believe they were suspicious based on something. I hope this case will not be use to surveillance to non-convicted people at random. I mean you must trust somebody in life, at least to some degree. It's part of living in a society. I think giving police officers right to try to gain trust for years without any shred of evidence just to have slight chance convicting someone about minor, non-violent crime is harmful to society as a whole. Not to mention it's waste of resources. I heard some law professor about US laws and he said that there are thousands criminal offences in US law system. Literally there are thousands reasons why somebody can go to jail. I think laws in the country I live in are no different. Most people at the age of 30 did something illegal, not because they wanted to, but because they were not aware that something is illegal.
It's always been the case that a person could be infringing one or more laws (e.g. motoring offences) - because the law is so vast and inconsistent. There are no innocent in that reckoning. The problem now being that, if you allow algorithmic detection of this (including deficiencies in the algorithm), granted that this particular case was not likely algorithmic, you will highlight people who were never intended to be suspects at all. Our laws are simply not sufficiently robust or well defined to allow the lawmaker's intent to translate into algorithms. Nor is the law intended to be rigorously applied in all cases. Worse, where far more evidence or activity is now online and searchable, it opens the way for the unscrupulous or corrupt LE and govt. to attack people who are "undesirable" or they do not like, without probable cause and accountable process. That's why the constitution protections were there in the first place. Add a bit of parallel construction, and the known ability to plant evidence on peoples' computers, you have a dangerous situation. Which is why its very prudent to minimise and compartmentalise, as innocent as you think you may be. This chap appears to be both criminal and foolish though.
