What Facebook sends the cops

April 7, 2012 1:28 PM

When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here's what Facebook sends the cops.
posted by Foci for Analysis (22 comments total)

But that subpoena isn't from the cops...
posted by planet at 1:37 PM on April 7, 2012

Shouldn't there be thousands of Farmville requests?
posted by Xoebe at 1:46 PM on April 7, 2012 [8 favorites]

I'm curious how 'deleted' photos factor in to this. Ones that Facebook maintains for years and years after the original deletion request has gone through.
posted by codacorolla at 1:50 PM on April 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Underwhelming.
posted by TwelveTwo at 1:52 PM on April 7, 2012

s far as we can tell, nobody's ever seen what one of these looks like...

Sigh. Really guys, if you'd done some research, you'd see that this is nothing.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 1:52 PM on April 7, 2012

I once got a court subpoena, which is why I prefer a button fly these days.
posted by Abiezer at 1:52 PM on April 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google and the NSA

The NSA is building the country’s biggest spy data center to store intercepted communications, apparently including the communications of American citizens, although the NSA denies this.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:03 PM on April 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Is there a simple way to download this as a PDF? I'm not sure why sites use the stupid inline document viewers that invariably render the document too small to read. I know I can install a print to PDF plugin but seriously...
posted by polyhedron at 2:06 PM on April 7, 2012

Is there a simple way to download this as a PDF?

Doesn't look like it. In fact, from the way I read the article the police may have actually given them printouts (or the police got printouts from facebook)

The slideshow itself is this in an iframe And you can make it fill the browser window by modifying the URL
posted by delmoi at 2:54 PM on April 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Is there a simple way to download this as a PDF?

Each page can be downloaded as a .jpg, so here they are bundled as a PDF.

I hope the subpoenaed information was sent to the police as a digital file of which this is a scanned printout, but suspect otherwise. That would be way too efficient.
posted by Rangi at 3:54 PM on April 7, 2012

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/105727/fb-subpoena-db/fb-subpoena.pdf will get you an actual pdf.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:09 PM on April 7, 2012

And here's a web version.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:13 PM on April 7, 2012

I know this might be a derail (maybe an expansion?) but this content from the same case, which is interrogation of a witness of one of the craigslist killings is stunning in so many ways. It reads like a character study or a scene in a play, (cliched ones at that).
posted by stagewhisper at 4:48 PM on April 7, 2012

Heh, my Facebook subpoena would look something like this:

User keeps repeatedly requesting that we permanently delete, block and permaban his email address from our database.

Four years later they still haven't complied. I keep getting "confirm your account" request from when someone fat-fingers the wrong email address on signup.

I look forward to any potential class action lawsuits against Facebook.
posted by loquacious at 4:52 PM on April 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I know this might be a derail (maybe an expansion?) but this content from the same case, which is interrogation of a witness of one of the craigslist killings is stunning in so many ways. It reads like a character study or a scene in a play, (cliched ones at that).

In fact, I bet she is thinking about the interrogation scenes in crime shows or whatever.

She seems really conscious of ways that someone might try to poke a hole in her story or call her reliability into question based on some irrelevant detail. Like she's already picturing herself being cross-examined, thinking ahead to what that would be like, and moving to cut off any lines of attack ahead of time.

But yeah, there is sort of a 20th-century-theater vibe here, with all the verbal sparring over points that don't really advance the "plot" directly. There isn't enough swearing or pointless aggression (or, hell, enough Y chromosomes) for it to sound like Mamet, or enough emotional cruelty for it to pass for Albee, but it's in the ballpark.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:01 PM on April 7, 2012

Uh... So would Facebook chat transcripts ever be a part of this?

please say no

not that i ever plan to do anything that would warrant a subpoena

but i just really don't want anyone to read the ongoing chat my ex and i had over the course of our raunchy relationship

ever
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:46 PM on April 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

They are all logged and recorded and archived, just like your gmail transcripts; especially the ones "off record."
posted by TwelveTwo at 10:52 PM on April 7, 2012

So the redacted surnames, is that just for our benefit? I presume the cops got an uncensored version.
posted by epo at 12:55 AM on April 8, 2012

Anyone notice how facebook occasionally posts URLs without a preview? Anyone notice they drop the preview almost universally when posting popular negative stories about facebook itself? You can circumvent their redacting the preview by using a url shortener.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:10 AM on April 8, 2012

Anyone notice they drop the preview almost universally when posting popular negative stories about facebook itself?

No. Example?
posted by grouse at 8:20 AM on April 8, 2012

I've observed facebook dropping well over half the previews for stuff I post, but anecdotally stories that reflect poorly on facebook suffer this fate more frequently. I should start keeping records.
posted by jeffburdges at 11:03 AM on April 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

I should first try varying the browser I use for facebook really.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2012