Facebook monitors everything you say, may report it to the police

Facebook isn?t exactly Big Brother, but the social networking giant is definitely keeping an eye on what you say in private chats and messages.

[Image credit: laverrue]

Yes, Facebook is spying on its users. No, I don?t mean in the ?They?re scanning my status updates to show targeted ads? kind of way. Facebook is monitoring other communications, including private chats, and notifying the police on the rare occasion that it discovers possible criminal activity.

Reuters reports that an accused pedophile was arrested for contacting a 13-year-old girl on Facebook. The man, in his early 30?s, was only discovered because he set off warning signs in Facebook?s system that scans interactions on its network for suspicious activity. Due to the age discrepancy and nature of the conversation, the system alerted a Facebook employee, who then reviewed the interaction and notified authorities.

Facebook isn?t actively reading each and every message shared between users, but the social network uses a computer system that looks for signs of suspicious activity, and then has a human take a closer look only when a conversation is flagged. The messages between you and your best friend are unlikely to raise concern, but holding conversations with someone much younger who you have no connection to might. There?s no control room of Facebook employees monitoring real-time exchanges, but there is a system in place that flags some conversations and leads to Facebook relaying that information to law enforcement agencies.

?We?ve never wanted to set up an environment where we have employees looking at private communications,? Facebook Chief Security Officer Joe Sullivan told Reuters. ?So it?s really important that we use technology that has a very low false-positive rate.?

Internet users have wondered if Facebook ? and a number of other companies like Google, Twitter, and Yahoo! ? monitor their conversations. With confirmation that Facebook does keep an eye on what it?s users say, there?s bound to be questions of whether this is a good thing. On one hand, no one wants to see criminals go undetected and be able to victimize others. However, there are also concerns about privacy and what might be deemed criminal. This system might work to find terrorists, but what if repressive governments forced Facebook into complying with identifying dissident communications? RIM raised eyebrows when it expressed willingness to turnover private communications to government agencies and even said it might consider shutting down its network under a government order. Does the potential for bad things stemming from this system outweigh safety concerns, or is this recent arrest proof that targeted monitoring is a good idea?

Facebook says that it does not look at every message and wall post that users post, and there are a variety of factors that have to be at play to trigger the monitoring service. That should reassure some users, but others may not be comfortable with the idea of their messages being read under any circumstance. Keep that in mind that before you hit ?Send? on your next message.

Source: Reuters via Mashable

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