* Posts by tallywhacker

2 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Mar 2010

Police send Reg hack CRB check database

tallywhacker

No protective marking?

Many forces use a system where you can't send an email without giving it a protective marking ('Not protectively marked', 'Restricted', 'Confidential'). If you try to send anything higher than 'Not protectively marked' outside the secure government network, the client refuses.

Obviously it doesn't stop you from sending to the wrong person within that network, but it'd stop you sending it to some hack who must have made lemonade in his pants when he saw it :)

Facebook stands up to UK.gov's cyberbullying

tallywhacker

@Marty

I work for a police high tech crime unit, and I'd like to offer a few words. We're inundated with complaints about Facebook harassment and it's only very recently that Facebook even pretended to give a shit. Up until a few months ago people would complain using FB's own reporting system and nothing would happen. No response, no acknowledgement and certainly no resolution. They've got better recently, but we still know of offensive groups (as in they're committing a criminal offence, and they're also plain offensive) that were complained about months ago and are still up.

It wasn't just their public that they were contemptuous of either though - any law enforcement request from outside the US got pretty much ignored unless it was threat-to-life and you were very lucky. Even now, a lot of the time when people contact us to get stuff taken down we advise them to go through Facebook's own reporting procedure. This isn't because we're lazy, it's because the channels we have to go through are so torturous that it's simply unworkable to do it for every item that someone has good reason to want taking down.

If your friend was getting no joy reporting the offences against her then she might want to phone the force's High Tech unit directly through the switchboard. She'll need to have kept copies of the postings along with the dates etc (there'd be no point in the police approaching FB for them because they'd need to subpoena through the US courts. That'd be a major international operation. Other US-based companies in Facebook's league are much more helpful with this sort of thing, Facebook just seem to enjoy being pricks).

About the CEOP button, I dunno. Grooming does happen over Facebook - I've seen it. As other people have pointed out here though, the Peter Chapman affair seems to have been a shameful failure to manage a dangerous sex offender, and no number of buttons would have helped. As I've pointed out above though, Facebook don't seem overly-eager to face up to their responsibilities. The button isn't going to do any harm (and would barely be seen amongst all the crap that most teenagers have on their walls), and if it's used by even one teen who's getting groomed then it'll be worth it.

Having said this, the whole Alan Johnson visit was a distasteful, cynical ploy to grab some headlines by a government that needs to crawl into its grave and stop twitching.