Bikers Of America, Know Your Rights!

By Richard Lardner

WASHINGTON — The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter, too.

U.S. law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.
Think you know who's behind that "friend" request? Think again. Your new "friend" just might be the FBI.
The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes clear that U.S. agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs and video clips.
Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social networking sites to U.S. authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its Web site on Tuesday.
With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies in a strategy known as "deconfliction" to keep out of each other's way.
"You could really mess up someone's investigation because you're investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing," said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill, Conn., Police Department, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.
A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today's social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos and audio clips — a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases of violent crime, financial fraud and much more.
The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them.
"It doesn't really discuss any mechanisms for accountability or ensuring that government agents use those tools responsibly," said Marcia Hoffman, a senior attorney with the civil liberties foundation.
The group sued in Washington to force the government to disclose its policies for using social networking sites in investigations, data collection and surveillance.
Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.
The Justice Department document raises a legal question about a social-media bullying case in which U.S. prosecutors charged a Missouri woman with computer fraud for creating a fake MySpace account — effectively the same activity that undercover agents are doing, although for different purposes.
The woman, Lori Drew, helped create an account for a fictitious teen boy on MySpace and sent flirtatious messages to a 13-year-old neighborhood girl in his name. The girl hanged herself in October 2006, in a St. Louis suburb, after she received a message saying the world would be better without her.
A jury in California, where MySpace has its servers, convicted Drew of three misdemeanor counts of accessing computers without authorization because she was accused of violating MySpace's rules against creating fake accounts. But last year a judge overturned the verdicts, citing the vagueness of the law.
"If agents violate terms of service, is that 'otherwise illegal activity'?" the document asks. It doesn't provide an answer.
Facebook's rules, for example, specify that users "will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission." Twitter's rules prohibit its users from sending deceptive or false information. MySpace requires that information for accounts be "truthful and accurate."
A former U.S. cybersecurity prosecutor, Marc Zwillinger, said investigators should be able to go undercover in the online world the same way they do in the real world, even if such conduct is barred by a company's rules. But there have to be limits, he said.n the face-t-face world, agents can't impersonate a suspect's spouse, child, parent or best friend. But online, behind the guise of a social-networking account, they can.
"This new situation presents a need for careful oversight so that law enforcement does not use social networking to intrude on some of our most personal relationships," said Zwillinger, whose firm does legal work for Yahoo and MySpace.
Undercover operations aren't necessary if the suspect is reckless. Federal authorities nabbed a man wanted on bank fraud charges after he started posting Facebook updates about the fun he was having in Mexico.
Maxi Sopo, a native of Cameroon living in the Seattle area, apparently slipped across the border into Mexico in a rented car last year after learning that federal agents were investigating the alleged scheme. The agents initially could find no trace of him on social media sites, and they were unable to pin down his exact location in Mexico. But they kept checking and eventually found Sopo on Facebook.
While Sopo's online profile was private, his list of friends was not. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Scoville began going through the list and was able to learn where Sopo was living. Mexican authorities arrested Sopo in September. He is awaiting extradition to the U.S.
The Justice document describes how Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have interacted with federal investigators: Facebook is "often cooperative with emergency requests," the government said. MySpace preserves information about its users indefinitely and even stores data from deleted accounts for one year. But Twitter's lawyers tell prosecutors they need a warrant or subpoena before the company turns over customer information, the document says.

"Will not preserve data without legal process," the document says under the heading, "Getting Info From Twitter ... the bad news."

Twitter did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The chief security officer for MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam, said MySpace doesn't want to be the company that stands in the way of an investigation.
"That said, we also want to make sure that our users' privacy is protected and any data that's disclosed is done under proper legal process," Nigam said.
MySpace requires a search warrant for private messages less than six months old, according to the company.
Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company has put together a handbook to help law enforcement officials understand "the proper ways to request information from Facebook to aid investigations."

The Justice document includes sections about its own lawyers. For government attorneys taking cases to trial, social networks are a "valuable source of info on defense witnesses," they said. "Knowledge is power. ... Research all witnesses on social networking sites."
But the government warned prosecutors to advise their own witnesses not to discuss cases on social media sites and to "think carefully about what they post."
It also cautioned federal law enforcement officials to think prudently before adding judges or defense counsel as "friends" on these services.
"Social networking and the courtroom can be a dangerous combination," the government said.

OFF THE WIRE
As is the case with many horrific events in recent US history, the San Bernardino shooting leaves many Americans with more questions than answers…
san-bernardino-shooting

San Bernardino, CA — On the night of December 2, after the tragic shootings at the Inland Regional Medical Center, CBS Evening News interviewed a witness to the shooting.
The interview, which took place live and over the phone, has not been covered by any other mainstream outlet despite the vastly different details provided which completely contradict the subsequent ‘official’ narrative, while backing up several other eyewitness accounts.
Witness Sally Abdelmageed, who works at the Inland Regional Center, and witnessed the shooting, spoke to CBS correspondent Scott Pelley.
During this interview, Pelley would ask Abdelmageed to describe the shooters in detail. Abdelmageed replied that the shooters were three tall athletic white men.
Below is the transcribed conversation from last week’s interview.

Scott Pelley: One of the witnesses today is Sally Abdelmageed, who works at the Inland Regional Center, the building where the attack took place. She saw the attackers enter the building and we spoke to her by phone.
Sally Abdelmageed: I heard umm shots fired and it was you know from an automatic weapon so you know it was very unusual… why, you know why would we hear shots? As we look out the window a second set of shots goes off, and its just pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop and we saw a man fall to the floor.
Then we just looked and we saw three men dressed in all black military attire with vests on they were holding assault rifles and they (breathes) as soon as they opened the door to building three and one of them opened up the door to building three, he started to spray shoot, you know shoot all over into the room, that’s the room that we typically have conferences in, and we just heard more gunshots go off. I got my phone. I reached for my phone. I called 9-1-1 and I just hid under my desk. I didn’t see anymore, I just heard more gunshots go off as I was talking to the dispatch. We went into my manager’s office, locked the door, barricaded it. We heard running and things happening upstairs. About 30 minutes later someone came to the door, knocked on the door. But we didn’t obviously answer. Then another 60 minutes later someone came and took us into a secure room.

Scott Pelley: Ms. Abdelmageed, can you describe to me in as much detail as you can, what did the gunmen look like?
Sally Abdelmageed: I couldn’t see his face, he had a black hat on and from my view all I could see was a black hat and black long sleeve shirt, possibly gloves on. Ummm… he had black cargo pants on the kind with the zippers on the side and the big puffy pockets. He had a huge assault rifle and he had extra ammo. He was coming ready for, he was coming ready for something. To reload I don’t know. He had [inaudible] magazines. Umm… I couldn’t see what else, I just saw three dressed exactly the same.
Scott Pelley:You’re certain that you saw three men?
Sally Abdelmageed: Yes, it looked like their skin color was yeah, was white. They looked like they were athletic build and umm… they appeared to be tall.
When the call is over, Pelley ends the segment by saying, “and of course we’ve just learned that one of the suspects was actually a woman.”

What makes Abdelmageed’s recount of the shooting so compelling is that she is corroborating the initial reports coming from unknown witnesses and police accounts on the ground during the shooting.
As the Free Thought Project was reporting on the events as they unfolded, we managed to capture the links to police reports describing three shooters, who were “white males.”
Fox Los Angeles reported that the suspects are “white males” in “military gear” and armed with “rifles.”

Mark Stutte, who works in information technology for the county’s public health department, said his daughter called him from the scene, at the Inland Regional Center and described the exact same thing.
“It was a like a Christmas party, an award party that we were having,” Stutte said.
“She went to the restroom and she called me. She was huddled up in the restroom, and three gunman came in and they started shooting people — colleagues that I work with,” Stutte said.
As the press descended upon the scene, police began to insert themselves between witnesses and reporters. Not only did they threaten witnesses by telling them not to talk to the press, but they were seen on LIVE TV physically pushing witnesses and press away from each other.
Another strange facet to this already shady story was the fact that a SWAT team was holding an active shooter drill right next to where the shootings began.
San Bernardino Police Department Lt. Richard Lawhead confirmed that their SWAT team happened to be conducting training nearby. The team was suited, “ready to roll” and responded rapidly according to Lawhead.

What makes this drill noteworthy is that this is not the first time that emergency drills for the exact scenario unfolding were taking place at virtually the same moment the actual terrorist attacks began.
Paris-area emergency personnel and ambulance crews were taking part in a simulated emergency exercise on the very same day the Paris terrorist attacks took place.
Consequently, witnesses to the Paris attacks also said that the attackers were “white men, clean shaven, and dressed in black.”
During the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) was in the midst of a training exercise as well. It was called Vigilant Guardian, which “coincidentally” simulated planes being hijacked by terrorists.
The London subway attacks on 7/7 also encompassed drills happening only days prior to that terrorist attack.
To add even more mystery to the shooting, an attorney for the family describes numerous ways that the official story of that horrible crime “doesn’t add up.”
“There’s a lot of disconnects, and there’s a lot of unknowns, and a lot of things that quite frankly don’t add up,” insisted attorney David S. Chelsey, who represents Farooq’s family.
As the Free Thought Project previously reported, witnesses and investigators have both described a terrorist onslaught carried out with military precision by suspects who were trained and capable. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, didn’t appear to have the necessary background and skillset, according to Chelsey.
He expressed particular skepticism that Malik, who was nursing a newborn child, was suitable to carry out a depraved mission of that kind: “She was only about ninety pounds, so it’s unlikely she could even carry a weapon, or wear some type of a vest, or do any of this.”
The most provocative claim made by Chelsey dealt with the condition of the alleged terrorists when their bodies were found:

“Where the couple was found, from what I understand, is that they were handcuffed, lying face-down in this truck, shot up.”

By all accounts, Farook’s family is cooperating fully in the investigation.
“We sat with the FBI for three hours, and they tried to identify some characteristics or some affiliations that he might have had that have led him to act in this way, and they were totally stumped, totally frustrated,” Chelsey reports. “Everyone is clueless.”
The same day that the attorney for the family insisted that the ‘official story’ was full of holes, the FBI allowed dozens of reporters to trample and destroy the crime scene and made zero arrests.
As is the case with many horrific events in recent US history, the San Bernardino shooting leaves many Americans with more questions than answers. With a government so apt to deceive its citizens at the drop of a hat, who’s to know what really happened?
One thing, however, should remain certain, and it’s that we must always question everything. The second all Americans begin to accept the word of their leaders as the gospel truth is the second that liberty dies for good.
As Abraham Lincoln famously said on numerous occasions after most likely learning this through trial and error himself,

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

(Article by Matt Agorist; from The Free Thought Project)

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