Facebook and the police - a story.

reply to post by PeaceUk


Thanks so much for that link. I am now officially done with FB and that's a load off my mind.

A friends granddaughter had her picture put on someone else's FB page with a beer in her hand. She got kicked off the cheerleading squad. Pretty sad if you ask me but no one did. Anyway, I'm glad to be off of there.

Originally posted by PeaceUk
This doesn't relate to any PARTICULAR conspiracy, as such, but I posted it within this section because it is probably the most appropriate (so many of you can rant about BIG BROTHER and such, as I'm sure you will.)

My aim, however, is to just relate a simple story I was made aware of last night, as I am interested to what you all have to say about it.

A friend of mine was recently arrested and is currently on bail for armed robbery on a pair of taxi cabs with a weapon. I am not going to go into who my friend is, or indeed even the crime involved, but I want to tell you all what happened once he got to the police station.

So they arrest him, and put him in a room alone with a few policemen. They question him, about whether he did it, GOOD COP BAD COP etc etc. What I found interesting, was that during all this they showed him his:

facebook profile pictures
other images from his facebook profile
information about his friends on facebook
posts on twitter

and indeed he had police from PLAISTOW, a whole different part of London, come into question him because while roaming through his online data they came across threats on twitter (which were simply a joke between him and another user) that he was going to blow up the Stratford Centre and Westfields shopping centre.

Now, I find this all very interesting as it shows just to what an extent your information can be used against you. We all know friends, family etc who post debatable information on their social networking sites (i.e. drug use etc) and they just don't know what a risk it is!

Well I guess maybe they shouldn't have been "joking" about blowing up some shopping center.How would you expect anyone but them to understand it was "a joke."Stupid on their parts I think...Also, to the poster that said the cia ran facebook?Where do you get this idea?I use facebook but don't really post anything on it, just use it to keep in contact with old friends.

This is slightly off topic, but I wanted to tell a story about a friend that shows they can monitor much more than just your social networks. Of course, this isn't the first we've ever heard of this but this is the first time I've personally known of this happening.

My friend who is a recording artist ran into some trouble with the police. My friend has a thing for older women, so he had a thing going on with one and long story short...the woman's daughter decided she was going to blackmail my friend claiming he tried to seduce and take advantage of her (she is underage). It never got to the point of blackmail though, instead the mother believed the daughter and went straight to the cops.

One day the police knocked on his door and showed my friend a huge file with EVERY text he had sent in the last year along with dozens of naked pics he sent to the mother. The officer from the task force said "Mr. ____, is this your penis?" He ended up being cleared of the charges because they had the daughter's text messages too, which showed her intent to blackmail my friend.

Moral of the story: Pretty much ANYTHING you say, type, post, tweet, text, blog, etc can be used against you.

Why do people always say bad things about facebook or blame facebook for their ignorance.
Fist off DONT PUT THINGS ON FACEBOOK That you don’t want other people to see.

It’s like a big bulletin board in front of your house. Everyone that drives by will see it. Even if you select private that info will still be sold to the highest bidder. You stuff will get out.

If you get caught doing something illegal and they have proof from your facebook well guess what? Your still a criminal. And a retarded one at that.

reply to post by Darkice19


I agree with you. The point I was trying to make was the fact that I did not realise, and I am sure that many others did not realise, the fact that the information uploaded was being flaunted so.
With all the complaints about a 'BIG BROTHER' society and antagonism at being 'spied on', it's funny that people should voluntarily upload sensitive information freely for anyone to see! What bothers me is just the fact that they assume that Facebook respects privacy, as in fact I once did too!

This thread just stands to alert people of the dangers.

A lot of lessons to be learned here re the internet. I don't think any site that I belong to has my name and address except for one. I decided to sign petitions at this partcular site and of course had to give my correct name and address. I am only concerned about it for safety's sake not because I have made a threat or anything like that. However after I started signing petitions regarding the environment and animal rights I stared getting mail at my home address - I received mail from the Whitehoue, congressmen, environmental groups, and just tons of spam to buy stuff - its enough that I get this stuff in my email, now I get it at home. One should never make a threat to another person online, not even as a joke. Hey don't you guys watch Criminal Minds - Garcia can find anything on a person re the net - so can the police, FBI, CIA and our other dear and devoted to the people Govt. agencies.