Response To Facebook Video Of Murder Is The Call For An Actual 'Godwin's Law'

from the that-name-is-taken dept

Anyone familiar with internet culture will be familiar with Godwin's law. It goes roughly something like this: the longer a discussion goes on on the internet, the higher the probability that a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis will be made. This axiom enjoys lofty status on the internet -- so often have we seen its claim played out in threads and discussions.

Godwin's Law is, of course, not a real law. But there may soon be a real Godwin's Law on the books, stemming from the murder of Robert Godwin Sr. and the subsequent video upload to Facebook of the murder.

Erie Feinberg, heads a company called GIPEC, specializing in deep Internet searches looking for criminals or terrorists. He is now calling for new federal regulations so what happened in Godwin’s case doesn’t happen again.

“I think it starts in Cleveland, in Ohio right now, where everybody calls their congressman and their senator," Feinberg told the FOX 8 I-Team. He wants new limits on websites posting horrific crimes. "They created this world, and it's not an excuse to say, ‘You can't expect us to police every bit of content post and video.’ Well, you created this. You should secure it."

Feinberg isn't the first person to stamp his or her feet in the wake of Robert Godwin's murder with calls for social media sites to do something, anything, to keep this type of content from ever being shared on the computer screens of the masses. What's frustrating about these types of screeds is how clear it is, at times even to the person screeding, that there is little if anything that can be done by companies like Facebook beyond what they do already to stop any of this. The problem is how tantalizing it is to those grieving, as well as to those of us viewing what happened to Godwin from afar, to try to place blame on a site like Facebook for ever having shown us this type of terrible content. You can hear it in Feinberg's words: "You created this. You should secure it." (And let's not even bother digging into the more cynical take that this kind of "do something!" regulation might benefit Feinberg's own company... )

Facebook already works quite hard to take down violent videos of this kind from its pages. However, there is little it can do to prevent the content from being uploaded initially. The site relies on users to report when images and videos ought to be taken down. The takedowns can only happen after the upload. The fundamental question is: do we want a world where user videos can be uploaded to Facebook? If we do, we need to understand the collateral content that may come with that. No Godwin's Law that would pass constitutional muster is going to solve the problem. And no amount of fist-shaking at this tragedy is going to make Facebook magically able to solve it either.

The calls for something to be done are calls based on emotion. Understandable emotion. You can, again, hear it in Feinberg's words as he pushes for a real-life Godwin's Law.

"There's gotta be some good or some positives out of this heinous act," Feinberg said.

No, there doesn't. This isn't a movie. Bad things happen and there isn't always something that can, or should, be done about it. Certainly, laying blame at the feet of Facebook because a single user uploaded a murder video is wholly inappropriate.

Filed Under: do something, erie feinberg, facebook, godwin's law, murder, robert godwin

State Senator's Wife Threatens Likely Fake Facebook Profiles With Fame For Hitting On Her Man

from the stand-by-your-man dept

We give our lawmakers a lot of grief in this glorious country, which is so glorious specifically because we can do that, but there's got to be hardship that goes along with public service of that sort. I mean, it can't all be lobbying money here, grandstanding there. I imagine being a Senator or Representative can be quite hard, and that isn't even an Anthony Weiner joke. As a result of all that, it's probably understandable when the wife of a state senator heads to her husband's official Facebook page to defend her man against what she admits are likely spammy Facebook fake-skank accounts asking to engage in said skankdom.

In a post Monday on a Facebook account belonging to Alabama state Sen. Shadrack McGill, R-Woodville, a poster identifying herself as McGill's wife said women have used the social media network to approach her husband "multiple times" since he was first elected in 2010.

"I have been silent for long enough!!" a person who identified herself as Heather McGill wrote. "NO MORE! Multiple times since being in office he has gotten emails from women (who may not even be real) inviting him to explore, also sending pictures of themselves."

Inviting him to explore? Are we 100% sure that these aren't a series of scantily-clad female versions of Lewis & Clark looking for the next great undiscovered territory? Perhaps more importantly, exactly what is the point of screeding against what, if our collective experience is any indication, is almost certainly a series of spam accounts looking to generate clicks at BS adult websites? Assuming they're the spam accounts I think they are, they aren't going to read the post. Nor are they going to read any post. They're not actual people. All this does is make you look silly on a senator's official Facebook page. And how is she accessing his page anyway? Isn't that a no-no?

She continues:

"We have children that look at our face books from time to time! Shame on you! I love my husband and my children too much to sit here and allow this to go on and will not give the enemy anymore foothold into my family! This is the 'behind the scenes' garbage that political life brings. I will not turn a blind eye to it any longer!"

That may be true, but they're turning a blind eye on you. Also, allowing your children access to your "face books" (er...) is your responsibility. That behind the scenes garbage you mentioned? Well, first, it comes with the territory, so buck up, hoss. Secondly, we all get those spam messages too. And we ignore them. You know...like nearly everyone on the planet does. We certainly don't go post-crazy about them, which in this case will only serve to shine a spotlight on her husband. You want to take bets on whether people are now sifting through Senator McGill's personal life more ardently than they had been before all this?

Filed Under: confusion, facebook, shadrack mcgill
Companies: facebook

Did Paul Duffy's Wife Admit That He Was Engaged In Interstate Extortion On Facebook?

from the oops,-did-i-say-that? dept

Paul Duffy, as many of you know, is one of the key players in the Prenda/Anti-Piracy Law Group game. In fact, he's "officially" the only named partner of Prenda -- though others have argued that it's really John Steele and Paul Hansmeier pulling Duffy's strings. Either way, Duffy might want to have a talk with his wife. As some folks noticed, late on Monday, his wife, Shari Duffy made a post on Facebook (since deleted) about her husband's activities, in which she lashes out at those who have pointed out that he's engaged in what various courts have now called a "fraud on the court" by calling them "the worst kinds of thieves imaginable." But, the key thing is the final line of her comment: If you can't read the full text, here it is:

Here's a fun fact...my husband sues people for pirating porn and the phone companies for putting it in the hands of people under 18...the men caught really hate his firm and have tried to harm him physically and financially, but they are the worst kind of thieves imaginable and shame on all the mobile carriers for allowing people to move X rated material to the hands of minors. Someone we know paid an undisclosed amount to settle a case so that we would not release his name to the public.

It's worth pointing out that the folks involved in various trolling efforts have generally bent over backwards to avoid saying that they're getting people to pay them to avoid being named, because, you know, that's illegal. As former federal prosecutor, Ken "Popehat" White notes, this "sounds like a confession of interstate extortion to me." And remember that Judge Wright, in the Southern District of California, has already claimed that Duffy's actions (along with Steele and Hansmeier) should be investigated by the US Attorneys for racketeering -- and extortion is generally a key part of many racketeering schemes.

I'm no expert on extortion law, so for those who are, please weigh in, but it seems like 18 USC 875(d) might be particularly relevant here:

Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Admitting that the person paid up to avoid being named, and not because of any merit in the accusations seems to be a pretty clear admission to violating that law. We've heard of stupid criminals getting rung up for their own social networking posts, but how about their wives "bragging" about their actions and admitting to federal crimes in the process?

And, of course, not that it needs to be said, but while perhaps some of the people speaking out against Duffy and his firm were caught in his scheme to get people to pay up, many of us have never been involved or accused of infringement, and are speaking out because we think his actions are an abuse of the legal system to shake people down for money -- pretty much exactly as Shari perhaps inadvertently admitted.

Filed Under: admissions, extortion, facebook, paul duffy, shari duffy, trolling
Companies: anti-piracy law group, prenda, prenda law

Lies, Damned Lies And Facebook Evidence Get FBI Involved In Divorced Couple's Spat

from the sounds-like-a-movie dept

In a story that sounds like a movie plot with a few extra twists in it, last week a man, David Voelkert, was arrested for putting a GPS device on his ex-wife's car. The backstory behind this is that the ex-wife, Angela Voelkert, had created a fake Facebook profile of a 17-year-old girl, named Jessica Studebaker, and then befriended David to try to "get him to talk" in a way that would provide her ammo in their custody battle. We've been hearing how Facebook evidence has become pretty standard these days in divorce cases, so I guess creating a fake persona to try to dig out some extra info is the obvious next step. David Voelkert was apparently extremely forthcoming with the fake teen, telling her how he had put a GPS device on Angela's car, and said something about harming Angela. He also spoke of taking his kids and "disappearing." Angela reported this to the authorities, and the FBI stepped in and arrested David over the GPS tracking while investigating the rest.

And that's where the case turned strange.

After holding him for four days, federal prosecutors have dropped all charges against David. Amazingly, he provided them with a sworn affidavit that he'd had notarized before all of the incriminating messages were sent to "Studebaker," a letter saying that he believed his wife was behind the account and was trying to "tamper" with his life:

I received a friend request from a one Jessica Studebaker. From the start of that friend request, I was under suspicion that it was not a real person, but my ex-wife or someone she knows. I am talking to this 'person' on Facebook via messages through the Facebook mail system. I am lying to this person in extent to gain positive proof that it is indeed my ex-wife trying to again tamper in my life. Anything said in the chat to her from me cannot be held as truth and I am chatting to this person in attempts to prove to my court that my ex-wife will not leave my personal life alone.... The lies that I am placing in this chat is for her to bring such up in court on the 8th day of June, 2011. I need proof what my ex-wife has been doing.... In no way do I have plans to leave with my children or do any harm to Angela Dawn Voelkert or anyone else....

Federal officials checked with the person who notarized the letter, confirming that it was indeed written and signed prior to the messages actually being sent... and realized that they had no case at all.

So how long until the movie rights to this story are sold?

Filed Under: divorce, facebook, fbi, lies

Facebook Comment Leads To Arrest In Zimbabwe

from the free-speech-isn't-free dept

Slashdot points us to a report out of Zimbabwe, claiming that a guy has been arrested for a Facebook comment. Apparently he commented on the Facebook page that supposedly belongs to the country's Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, where he said:

"I am overwhelmed, I don't want to say Mr. or PM what happened in Egypt is sending shockwaves to dictators around the world. No weapon but unity of purpose worth emulating, hey."

The guy was actually arrested before the police realized what he had written. An anonymous tipster claimed that the guy had sent a "security threat" via his phone, so he was arrested. Police then searched his phone and found that message. He's now been charged with "advocating or attempting to take-over government by unconstitutional means," and prosecutors have asked for him to be denied bail. Seems like an extreme response to a simple Facebook comment.

Filed Under: comments, facebook, free speech, zimbabwe

Facebook Timestamp Used In Lawsuit Claiming Driver Was Facebooking When She Ran Over & Killed Pedestrian

from the modern-evidence dept

With all the stories these days of folks "texting while driving," it was only a matter of time until there was an attempt to claim that Facebooking-while-driving resulted in an accident. A wrongful death lawsuit in Chicago is alleging that the driver of a car in a fatal accident had just updated her Facebook status at the same time. The details of the situation are a bit confusing. Basically, a 70-year-old guy named Raymond Veloz got into an accident with another car (not the fatal accident) around 7:30 am. The two cars pulled over to the side of the road to exchange information. Closer to 8 am, another car, driven by Araceli Beas, struck Veloz, severing his leg, resulting in him bleeding to death. Veloz's daugher is now claiming in the lawsuit that Beas updated her Facebook status at 7:54 am... the exact same time that Veloz called 911 over being hit by Beas' car. Beas' mother insists that her daughter updated her status earlier, from the front of her boyfriend's house, as she waited for her car to warm up. Either way, this should make for an interesting case, as the timing of the various calls and questions about the accuracy and delay in Facebook messages and timestamps will suddenly become very, very important...

Filed Under: car accidents, facebook, timestamp
Companies: facebook

How Should Facebook Respond To The Social Network Movie?

from the tread-carefully dept

As you probably know by now, there's a movie coming out this fall, called Social Network, which is sorta, kinda, maybe an extremely fictionalized version of the story behind Facebook. It was based on a book by Ben Mezrich, which was already a fictionalized account of the founding of Facebook -- based on notes from a disgruntled co-founder, with Mezrich taking significant creative license to fill in lots of blanks. Then, famed writer Aaron Sorkin wrote the script, passing it through a second fictionalized filter. And, not surprisingly, the folks at Facebook are not at all pleased with the movie, which doesn't exactly portray Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook in a very nice light.

Apparently Facebook execs are debating what to do about the movie, and it's almost surprising that they haven't tried to take legal action -- because that's almost what you'd expect these days. Of course, they probably realize that doing so will only get the movie more attention (though, it certainly looks like the movie is going to get plenty of attention already). Yet in an age where "publicity rights" lawsuits are becoming more common and many movie makers feel they need to secure the rights of anyone and any company that shows up in a film, it's actually somewhat surprising that this particular film actually was made.

But given that Facebook execs are trying to figure out what to do about the film and how to respond to it, I'm curious what folks here think. I think I would go with the simplest of all solutions: a single page that explains why the movie is a greatly fictionalized account, and not an accurate depiction of either the company or its employees, past or current, and then just stay quiet otherwise. What else would you suggest?

Filed Under: aaron sorkin, facebook, mark zuckerberg, movies, social network
Companies: facebook

Middle School Principal Tells Parents To Ban Facebook And Spy On Text Messages

from the nanny-state dept

A bunch of folks have been submitting this story of a New Jersey middle school principal sending an email to all parents telling them to ban Facebook for their kids and to spy on all of their text messaging habits. Because, apparently, at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, "trust" is not something they want to teach. We see this sort of overreaction to new things all of the time. In the past, school administrators have needlessly freaked out about such things as comic books, dungeons and dragons, walkmen and mp3 players. If the principal, Anthony Orsini, had just sent out a note saying "talk to your kids and pay attention to what they're doing online," it would have been fine. But, instead, he went all out:

It is time for every single member of the BF Community to take a stand! There is absolutely no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site!

Let me repeat that - there is absolutely, positively no reason for any middle school student to be a part of a social networking site! None....

Actually, there are plenty of reasons why a middle school kid might be a part of a social networking site: it's called communicating with their peers. That doesn't mean parents should let their kids use them entirely freely, but a blanket ban is clear overkill by someone who apparently doesn't understand how these things work.

Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of any social networking site. Today!

Let them know that you will at some point every week be checking their text messages online! You have the ability to do this through your cell phone provider.

Let them know that you will be installing Parental Control Software so you can tell every place they have visited online, and everything they have instant messaged or written to a friend. Don't install it behind their back, but install it!

He goes on to then urge parents to contact the police any time their child gets a message they don't like:

If your son or daughter is attacked through one of these sites or through texting - immediately go to the police! Insist that they investigate every situation. Also, contact the site and report the attack to the site - they have an obligation to suspend accounts or they are liable for what is written.

That last line, saying that the sites are liable is simply not correct, but why let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Orsini then goes on to explain that he's absolutely positive that social networks will be found in studies to be damaging to kids:

It is not hyperbole for me to write that the pain caused by social networking sites is beyond significant - it is psychologically detrimental and we will find out it will have significant long term effects, as well as all the horrible social effects it already creates.

Of course, similar things have been written about every "new" thing that the older generation in society doesn't get -- including the waltz ("we feel it a duty to warn every parent against exposing his daughter to so fatal a contagion"), movies, videos games... and chess ("chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while it affords no benefit whatever to the body"). I assume, we can add Orsini's quote to the other quotes about those other things soon.

Basically, it looks like Orsini has fallen prey to yet another moral panic. He claims that it doesn't make sense to teach "responsible" computing, because middle school kids can't handle it. It appears that many kids in his school disagree, and are quoted in the article saying so. Clearly, many kids will abuse social networks and the will bully others. But doing a blanket ban certainly won't work, and is just someone overreacting because he was unable to handle some kids acting poorly. It's an attempt to prevent kids from doing stuff, just so that the administrators might get a little "security" from kids being kids.

Perhaps the principal of the Benjamin Franklin Middle School, should pay attention to Ben Franklin's words:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Filed Under: facebook, new jersey, parenting, sms
Companies: facebook

Should Managers Care That Employees Are On Facebook And YouTube While At Work?

from the results-based-management dept

A recent study reported that 6.8 percent of URLs accessed by businesses lead to Facebook and 10 percent of bandwidth goes to YouTube. Of course, as to be expected, along with such a study come the fears that security and worker productivity is harmed by allowing access to such "non-work" sites:

The figures show that IT managers are right to be concerned about the amount of social network use at work. There are two real concerns here: firstly that employees will be downloading applications from social networks and putting security at risk; and secondly the amount of corporate bandwidth that appears to be being used for non-corporate activity.

These fears seem to resurface every once in awhile, especially when some new technology starts to become ubiquitous in the workplace. First, it's silly to think that social networks would somehow have more security-risking applications to download than the rest of the internet. As for the productivity concern, if you're worrying about how much time your employees are spending doing "non-work" things, then you're worrying about the wrong thing. From online shopping to social networking, allowing employees to do "non-work" web surfing while they are at the office keeps them happier and more productive. In fact, multiple studies have shown that social media sites like Twitter and Facebook actually make workers more productive by sparking creative ideas.

Of course, in order to manage this properly, managers must monitor productivity based on concrete, measurable goals -- rather than focus on the time spent doing the work. After all, if you're delivering results, why should your manager care if you spend a few minutes a day catching up with friends on Facebook?

Filed Under: facebook, productivity, twitter, youtube

The Story Behind Facebook Threatening To Sue Developer Into Oblivion For Highlighting Useful Facebook Data

from the how-nice-of-them dept

Facebook's lawyers have been getting pretty nasty lately. We recently covered the company's threats against the creator of a useful Greasemonkey script, and now a developer named Pete Warden has shared the sordid details of his legal run-in with Facebook -- where they threatened to sue him for his activity aggregating publicly available data found on Facebook.

You should read the full story, but basically, he built a simple crawler for public Facebook info, initially for his own purposes. He made sure that Facebook's robots.txt didn't block such crawlers -- and he also emailed someone at Facebook (who he had dealt with before), but didn't hear back from anyone. As his crawler worked, it started collecting a bunch of interesting data, and so he set up a website to let people explore some of this (again, public) data.

After playing with some of the data himself, he started making some interesting maps and charts with the data, and did a simple analysis of geographic locations of Facebook friend connections to show people what you could do with the data. He noted that if others (such as professional researchers) wanted to dig into the data, he would let them access a version of the data set (with identifying info stripped). The chart he released got picked up by a variety of sites and quickly got passed around.

And that's when the lawyers called:

On Sunday around 25,000 people read the article, via YCombinator and Reddit. After that a whole bunch of mainstream news sites picked it up, and over 150,000 people visited it on Monday. On Tuesday I was hanging out with my friends at Gnip trying to make sense of it all when my cell phone rang. It was Facebook's attorney.

He was with the head of their security team, who I knew slightly because I'd reported several security holes to Facebook over the years. The attorney said that they were just about to sue me into oblivion, but in light of my previous good relationship with their security team, they'd give me one chance to stop the process. They asked and received a verbal assurance from me that I wouldn't publish the data, and sent me on a letter to sign confirming that. Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site even if they scrupulously obeyed the instructions it contained. The only legal way to access any web site with a crawler was to obtain prior written permission.

Mathew Ingram reported on the data getting forced down, and got a statement from Facebook that seems to miss the point:

Andrew Noyes, manager of public policy communications at Facebook, said in an email that Warden "aggregated a large amount of data from over 200 million users without our permission, in violation of our terms. He also publicly stated he intended to make that raw data freely available to others." Noyes also noted that Facebook's statement of rights and responsibilites says that users agree not to collect users' content or information "using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission."

But I still don't see what the legal argument is. At best, I could see them terminating his account for disobeying the terms of service -- but even then the whole thing doesn't make much sense. The data is publicly available and, as Peter notes, it's pretty much standard practice for people to aggregate and analyze such data. However, he also pointed out that he couldn't afford to be a legal test case, and so he gave in and negotiated with Facebook to remove the data.

In the end, though, this shows Facebook's rather schizophrenic view towards data and privacy. On the one hand, it tries to push everyone to open up their info, but then if anyone does anything useful with it, they threaten to sue?

Filed Under: crawler, facebook, legal threats, public information