1st Amendment Violated as Facebook Assists Police in Pre-Crime Investigations

1st Amendment Violated as Facebook Assists Police in Pre-Crime Investigations







Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

On August 16th former US Marine Brandon Raub was arrested for posting his opinion about the US government on his Facebook page. Raub is currently being held in a psychiatric ward. In a statement by Raub, he explains:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I’m currently in John Randolph in the psychiatric ward being held
against my will. They were concerned about me calling for the arrest of
government officials.</blockquote>
Raub’s lawyers say that
he will be held for “up to 30 days’ further confinement in a VA psych
ward” after “government officials again pointed to Raub’s Facebook posts
as the sole reason for their concern and for his continued
incarceration.”

While Raub was taken forcefully,
put into handcuffs and taken by the FBI to be questioned, both the FBI
and Secret Service deny that Raub was arrested or detained by them.

Facebook comments were recently cited as evidence in
a court case concerning cyber bullying where comments on a personal
page were ruled by a US Federal court as information that can be
lawfully obtained by the police to be used against a defendant.

William Pauley, US District Court Judge, stated that because the
defendant made violent threats in his posts which are deemed public
information that they are allowable as evidence against him by
prosecutors.





On April 24th, District Judge Raymond Jackson ruled that by clicking a
“like” button on Facebook, that this affiliation is public domain and
not protected by the 1st Amendment. Jackson wrote:
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Simply liking a Facebook page is insufficient. It is not the kind of
substantive statement that has previously warranted constitutional
protection, and continues to say that, Facebook posts can be a matter of
public concern; however the Court does not believe Plaintiffs Carter
and McCoy have alleged sufficient speech to garner First Amendment
protection.</blockquote>
The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed suit with
the US Department of Defense (DoD) because the federal agency refused
to admit their relationship with social networks with regard to
surveillance and law enforcement investigations.

Government officials scan Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube for
evidence of criminal activities, activists and possible suspects who may
have not committed a crime just yet. And these agencies named in the
lawsuit refused to cooperate with the EFF in explaining how gathering
this information would impact “citizens' privacy rights and associated
legal protections.”

Hoping to dupe Americans into posting on their Facebook page, the CIA gathers information while inviting people to register and read information about the “employment opportunities.”

While government agencies are using Facebook to data mine on Americans, it has been suggested in the social meme that without a Facebook page, a person’s mental stability is questionable.

Now,
having a profile or not is the barometer of whether or not a person is
“suspicious” or not. Some psychologists are even suggesting that not
having a Facebook profile means that you are a psychopath. The link between the Batman shooter and the Norwegian mass murderer was their lack of Facebook profiles. In fact, this may “be the first sign that you are a mass murderer.”

Trapwire,
the most impressive pre-crime surveillance software corporation with
clients from Wal-Mart to the White House, is but one of many types of
Big Brother network grids that have incrementally begun to invade our
lives.

Alexander Keith, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) described at a yearly Def Con computer
hacking conference that the internet is “at great risk from
exploitation, disruption and destruction.” He went on to voice his
“concern that it’s going to flow into destructive attacks that could
have consequences for our critical national infrastructure and the
Internet itself.”

Basically, Keith is concerned because the internet is currently not controlled by federal agencies. When the NSA needs more hackers,
they recruit out of colleges and universities across the US under the
official Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. By using
college students, the NSA is amassing an “elite team of computer
geniuses” that will be trained in all methodology of hacking based on
their exceptional cyber intelligence, military capabilities and ability
to enhance law enforcement’s expansion of spying on Americans.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) has requested the authority to
criminally prosecute those who lie on Facebook and other social media as
a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. According to
Richard Downing, the DoJ deputy computer crime chief, the law must
provide for “prosecutions based upon a violation of terms of service or
similar contractual agreement with an employer or provider.”

A felony can be committed by the user of a social media site by
exceeding the authorized access; meaning any infraction of the website’s
term of service. Put in other words,
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If a person assumes a fictitious identity at a party, there is no
federal crime. Yet if they assume that same identity on a social network
that prohibits pseudonyms, there may again be a CFAA violation. This is
a gross misuse of the law.</blockquote>
The NSA has transformed itself into the largest and most comprehensive
intelligence agency with the expressed purpose of collecting data on
American citizens. Emails, cell phone calls, text messages, Google
searches, parking receipts, and all other forms of information are
collected and stored for future use. Social media sites like Facebook
readily give over information to federal agencies that conduct such
surveillance.

And like we have seen with the case of US Marine veteran Brandon Raub, it can be used against you.


Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/08/1st-amendment-violated-as-facebook.html