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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

What Facebook Hands Over To Police When A User Is Suspected Of Murder - Forbes

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What Facebook Hands Over To Police When A User Is Suspected Of Murder - Forbes
Apr 10th 2012, 21:22

Phil Markoff's Facebook file, via the Boston Phoenix

The Boston Phoenix has a pretty fascinating and detailed story about the digital detective work involved in tracking down Phil Markoff, a.k.a. the Craigslist Killer. After looking for evidence in the Marriott hotel room where the first erotic masseuse victim was found and going through the victim's cell phone to contact friends and relatives, the Boston Police Department turned to the somewhat controversial technique, recently brought into the spotlight by the ACLU, of location-tracking cell phones for help with the investigation.

After a second attack at a Westin Hotel, some FBI agents who happened to be passing through helped the Boston police to "pull cell-tower records for the time period 15 minutes before and after each incident, for those near the scene of each crime." They tried to pinpoint a phone that was used in both areas around the times of the attack, but they wound up with hundreds of phone numbers. So, it was basically a dead end.

What wound up being much more useful was the email address that Markoff used to contact his first victim. It was a throw-away hotmail account, but Microsoft was able to give the police the IP address of the person who opened it (after getting a subpoena), while Comcast was able to supply the name and physical address of the person associated with the IP (also after receiving a subpoena).

That's when the police turned to Facebook. They sent a subpoena to the social networking giant and got a 60+ page dossier on Markoff, including all of his wall posts, the photos he'd been tagged in, a list of his friends, and a history of his log-ins (with associated IP information). It doesn't seem to have actually been that helpful in the investigation, but it makes for an interesting perusal.

In posting the Facebook file, the Phoenix headlined it, "When the cops subpoena your Facebook information, here's what Facebook sends the cops." That's incorrect given what Facebook says are its practices these days. This investigation was conducted back in 2008. The police department wouldn't be able to get that much information today with just a subpoena (an official request from a law enforcement or government agency that hasn't been reviewed by a judge). When I interviewed Facebook's director of security, Joe Sullivan, earlier this year, he told me the company provides only "basic subscriber information" in response to a subpoena, meaning a user's name, e-mail address and IP address. Sullivan said that, to get a peek at a user's photos, status updates, private messages, friend lists, or pokes, law enforcement has to get a search warrant, making things a little harder for investigators but protecting users from fishing expeditions that haven't gotten a judicial stamp of approval.

None of this meticulously-collected evidence wound up being used to try Markoff, though, because he committed suicide after being charged.

Hunting the Craigslist Killer [The Phoenix]

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