The 21st century update of the old saw where the burglar leaves his wallet in the sofa cushions:
The popular online social networking site Facebook helped lead to an alleged burglar’s arrest after he stopped check his account on the victim’s computer, but forgot to log out before leaving the home with two diamond rings.
While this particular breed of clumsiness is of course quite rare, according to a friend of mine who is a cop, it is becoming standard practice in certain kind of crimes to check the suspect’s public Facebook profile.
The default settings on Facebook show a limited version of someone’s profile, but also show with whom they are friends. So suppose you’ve just arrested some kid who knocked over a 7-11. From witnesses, you know he had help. But who could have been his associates? The friends list in some cases is an exceedingly helpful starting point.
13 comments
September 20, 2009 at 7:03 am
Gary Farber
It’s astonishing that Facebook now has over 300,000,000 users, but the UI is still designed by demented weasels, and the Help System still describes no-longer-existent functions.
Meanwhile, everyone should always pay attention to their privacy settings as regards anything online, and for that matter, should never use any software without starting by going through the settings. If they don’t, they typically will either live to regret it, or die young.
September 20, 2009 at 7:16 am
Matt
This particular case is new and funny, but a surprisingly large number of crimes are solved only because of dumb mistakes by criminals. (People driving away from burglaries, with the goods in their cars, and the cars having expired plates, or running stop lights, etc. are good examples that I’ve seen up close. Another classic example is the killers of Michael Jordon’s father making a video tape of themselves dancing around with the championship rings bragging about it that they showed to many people.) I’m not sure if the criminal class is dumb or only the dumb ones get caught, but the dumbness of many criminals is an important part of the criminal justice system.
September 20, 2009 at 7:30 am
TF Smith
And if they don’t get caught from their Facebook page, they gop on reality television:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-shoplift20-2009sep20,0,2554762.story
September 20, 2009 at 7:47 am
oudemia
The very best FB crimebusters story.
September 20, 2009 at 10:03 am
dana
This particular case is new and funny, but a surprisingly large number of crimes are solved only because of dumb mistakes by criminals.
As my cop friend says, most criminals just simply aren’t all that bright. They’re perhaps no more prone to making dumb mistakes than the rest of the population, but that’s sufficient. Criminal masterminds — or even journeymanminds — just aren’t typical.
September 20, 2009 at 10:42 am
teofilo
oudemia’s link is great.
September 20, 2009 at 11:26 am
Gary Farber
Second teofilo.
I am, of course, immediately twirping on Facebook!
(I blogged about twirping here, along with umpty hundred other stories! With pictures! And slideshows! And smell-o-vision!)
(Okay, I’m lying about the smell-o-vision; don’t pee yourself about it.)
September 20, 2009 at 11:55 am
nick
Stark contrast to those “Buglars are using Facebook and Twitter to find victims” stories; sadly, the best evidence they had was some researches found out personal information from a small percentage of FB users with random friend requests, and came to the conclusion that burglars are using Facebook and Twitter to break into your houses. Wait, what?
“I, a scientist, found some information. Therefor, criminals are using that information to attack you.” Logic!
September 20, 2009 at 12:11 pm
fromlaurelstreet
I just finished transcribing a criminal trial in which the three defendants were charged with resisting arrest and ABDW on a police officer.
One of the defendants, who took the stand, was asked about rants on her MySpace page where she described herself as having difficulty with authority. Another witness was asked about a comment she wrote to a contemporaneous online newspaper report of the incident.
What I’m waiting for though is, in cases where route of travel is important, the ADA to interactively use Google maps to illustrate things for the jurors.
September 20, 2009 at 5:31 pm
kevin
Was he updating his status to “committing a felony”?
September 20, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Sir Gnome
Was he updating his status to “committing a felony”?
You’d be surprised to know the depth of information people are willing to cede to the virtual-self market. Or not.
I canceled my FB account because of privacy concerns (and the aggregate sites connected to FB, probably the worse agents). Admittedly, it was a good tool for staying in touch with distant friends, but finally I realized it is merely a tool full of tools, and even in spite of that, it is just too creepy as the social fetish that it has become. I don’t recall, verbatim, the language that FB uses to describe their sensitivity to user privacy and privacy settings, but there was an eeriness in the manner that they define “privacy” not as a prior assumption but as a matter of degree, an afterthought. And 300 million approve.
September 20, 2009 at 11:23 pm
URK
Well, I’d be foolish to minimize concerns about privacy, so i won’t but I am, in my private life, ignoring them except for not saying much of anything online that i wouldn’t say publicly or could defend to a future employer that isn’t a total fascist. that is to say that I have a facebook page, like it, am careful about my privacy settings and somewhat circumspect in postings.
Now, not to be all language police or anything, but “criminal class” includes alot of people who aren’t or shouldn’t really be criminals, right? and excludes alot of people who are or should be criminals, right?
September 21, 2009 at 7:49 am
Josh
It’s astonishing that Facebook now has over 300,000,000 users, but the UI is still designed by demented weasels, and the Help System still describes no-longer-existent functions.
No, really, it’s not.