Facebook to Be Used by US Federal Law Enforcement

As a last resort, charter the corporation and put the servers in a country that is hostile to the United States. Encrypt all outgoing and incoming traffic.

How, exactly, would the US grab a hold of that social networking site, warrants be damned?

It wouldn't need to because the plan is so unworkable.

Why is it unworkable?

You only need a buncha geeks that oppose surveillance. There's plenty.

edited 12th Jul '11 12:32:10 PM by SavageHeathen

I laugh at your belief that any social networking company actually cares enough to bother.

As I edited in above, but you may have missed, Facebook is already doing things that make any good privacy advocate uncomfortable without even bringing the government into it.

I wish you luck.

edited 12th Jul '11 12:35:46 PM by blueharp

Then I'm gonna start one.

Once I get the encryption and interface coded (it might take a while), I'll find an appropriate country to set the whole thing in, and let there be wailing and gnashing of teeth at the FBI.

edited 12th Jul '11 12:39:45 PM by SavageHeathen

Servers are expensive, especially if you want to keep moving them. How exactly do you expect to afford the cost? Especially when the rich world has frozen all your assets?

Frozen all assets? Whaddayamean?

It ain't illegal to ignore out-of-jurisdiction warrants, is it?

edited 12th Jul '11 12:43:24 PM by SavageHeathen

You'll have to hope there's more incentive for them to ignore the warrants than listen to them.

And you'll have to worry about other solutions to your obstacles. You'll need to develop tools to sweep for surveillance at home.

Let's say I set up the page, and I call it "snoopmenot.com, only cop-free social networking site. We don't hand your data to the pigs. Ever." or something like that. I charter the corporation in any random Caribbean country. Let's assume I'm living there.

Say the DEA gets a warrant against a guy's profile in my site... But both corporation and servers are overseas.

They get a warrant at an US court. Which doesn't have jurisdiction where the corporation, servers and owner are. It's pretty much the end of the line, ain't it?

edited 12th Jul '11 12:55:05 PM by SavageHeathen

Nope. They go to the government of that country. Other gov't might say...sure! We love you guys and the millions you sent us last week!

You're really optimistic if you think that can't happen. Oh, it probably won't, because chances are they have other evidence and they don't need it anyway, but also because it's just not worth it to them.

And that's not even getting into the secret hacker stuff that they may or may not have.

What if the country I locate everything in has abysmal relations with the United States Government and is unlikely to cooperate?

edited 12th Jul '11 1:13:46 PM by SavageHeathen

Then you'll have to assume that the US gov't will happily apply other methods, because of course, it'd be an enemy country, and thus a threat to national security.

You wouldn't be helping yourself there.

You're still assuming that the people who live inside that corporation are even trustable. After all "No cops allowed here" is screaming "Crime here is okay".

Heres a wild thought.

Get this.

Dont use facebook, or put your private information on it.

That too, Facebook is notorious for not being private at all, long before this in fact.

They don't have to be trustable. There must be no way for the site's admins and personnel to monitor or retrieve the data the users put in there. Only the users themselves are supposed to retrieve their own data... Them and those they invite. You can't get probable cause, because you cannot get access to any third-party content inside that site without their permission.

Yes, criminals would use it. And I see nothing wrong with that. If it jeopardizes or even inconveniences police work, I'm doin' it right.

Oh, that. I'd have to code the encryption layer myself, then. And review any functions to upload data for backdoors.

edited 12th Jul '11 1:35:08 PM by SavageHeathen

And the designer who put a backdoor on there because it's quite easy to do so. Yeah, they need to be trustable.

And by criminals, I mean people who can grab your information.

edited 12th Jul '11 1:31:31 PM by Ramus

Encryption layer? You'd have to review all of the hardware, and the compiler, and the memory. How sure are you that your computer ram can't be tapped?

So basically, you only get this stuff if you're tech savvy and even then, you may not be totally covered. Sounds like a perfect solution.

No, anybody could use the site... To find somebody, I guess you'd search for somebody's name, age and place, just like in Facebook.

You'd get a lot of single pictures together to the AGE and CITY info. You'd then have a chance to tell that guy/gal who you are and why do you want to add them to your friends' list.

When the invitation was accepted, a friend key to both profiles would be exchanged, enabling your account to view their profile, but not alter it or read their mailbox.

I, as site admin, would not be able to read those contents at all, since they'd be encrypted with a key that I did not have.

edited 12th Jul '11 2:13:07 PM by SavageHeathen

Man, I'm not sure where to start. Maybe it's the redundancy of it all or the security problems still present. Either way, I'll just nod my head, smile, and say "Have fun with making it".

Savage, you left something out of the equation..

Why the fuck are you posting evidence of your crimes on Facebook in the first place? That's fucking stupid!

They grab private messages. The Average Joe does not know that his private messages can be monitored after he deletes them.

Pretty much any youngster could get prosecuted if the pigs get a hold of their Facebook. Odds are they've got pics smoking pot and engaging in underage drinking: Normal activities most folks do but that are criminalized nonetheless.

That's why a cop-free, warrant-noncompliant social network is a good idea.

edited 12th Jul '11 3:48:27 PM by SavageHeathen

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177425/Is_there_a_replacement_for_Facebook_

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9177425/Is_there_a_replacement_for_Facebook_?taxonomyId=167&pageNumber=2

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/09/diaspora-open-source-facebook-replacement-drops-first-alpha.ars

"Diaspora was born of the frustration with Facebook's central control over user-supplied data and an increasing propensity to play loose with users' privacy. "Diaspora aims to be a distributed network, where totally separate computers connect to each other directly, and will let us connect without surrendering our privacy," project co-founder Maxwell Salzberg wrote in April."

edited 12th Jul '11 10:25:33 PM by PhilippeO

Thread Hop

Last I checked, criminals getting arrested is a good thing.