Facebook Tells the Cops When You Talk About Criminal Activity in Private Messages
Facebook has a new little known software that monitors your
profile chat and pictures for criminal activity. The software will
proceed to alert an employee at the company who will then decide whether
to call authorities or not.
The software will monitor individuals who have a ‘loose’ relationship on social media networks, according to an interview with Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan.
Reuters
interview with the security officer explains, Facebook’s software
focuses on conversations between members who have a loose relationship
on the social network. For example, if two users aren’t friends, only
recently became friends, have no mutual friends, interact with each
other very little, have a significant age difference, and/or are located
far from each other, the tool pays particular attention.
The scanning program looks for certain phrases found in previously
obtained chat records from criminals, including sexual predators
(because of the Reuters story, we know of at least one alleged child
predator who is being brought before the courts as a direct result of
Facebook’s chat scanning). The relationship analysis and phrase material
have to add up before a Facebook employee actually looks at
communications and makes the final decision of whether to ping the
authorities.
