10 ms·

I'm kinda surprised that police don't get warrants for death threats. Sites like Reddit and Facebook collect lots of data. Even if someone is trying to be anony

by mdasen 5y ago

I'm kinda surprised that police don't get warrants for death threats. Sites like Reddit and Facebook collect lots of data. Even if someone is trying to be anonymous, they can likely connect it to a person. Some people might be able to mask their trail, but the vast majority can't. It just seems surprising that no one seems to actually investigate and prosecute those who make death threats online. I'm not saying that people should lose anonymity online in the vast majority of cases, but when people are making death threats and even coordinating and conspiring to harass someone with death threats and potential real-world harm, it seems like police should be getting warrants for things like IP addresses, device IDs, browser fingerprints, phone numbers, and other anti-spam information that sites are using. I know some people know a lot about how they're being tracked online, but most people don't. If there are hundreds of people posting death threats, most probably aren't hiding who they are well. Prosecuting even a few seems like it would deter a lot more. How confident are you that you aren't leaving a trail? I'm not saying that people should be generally worried about leaving a trail, but when it comes to death threats that can turn into actual murder people seem oddly confident that no one will track them down - despite all we know about how good platforms like Facebook are at figuring out who we really are. It's not like police aren't asking for huge warrants from people like Google. Google has said that they're getting a huge number of geofence warrants - "hey, give us a list of everyone who has been in this geographic area." That seems way more problematic than "hey, there has been a criminal assault (death threat) and we want all identifying information you have on this account that committed the assault." Again, I'm not saying that the person behind the account should instantly be found guilty (accounts can be hacked and such), but it seems to offer a much more precise avenue of getting to bad people than a geofence warrant with a lot fewer privacy implications. > I contacted Facebook. The best the company could suggest was to block trolls from future posts Facebook knows who these people are. They could ban them from FB/WhatsApp/Instagram. It's weird because they seem like the type of thing you'd want to ban for SPAM/harrassment. It seems weird that the response from sites and police seems to be: there's nothing we can do. These are the same sites that figure out things voting rings for anti-spam reasons. These are the same police that vigorously want to prosecute someone for stealing $20. But when it comes to death threats (that can turn into actual murder), they seem to think "that seems like a minor inconvenience compared to SPAM or someone stealing $20."

criddell 5y ago
The police have limited resources and they can’t go after everything. Online stuff is hard because it usually requires cooperation of multiple police forces in different jurisdictions. I think it often just comes down to there being easier things to go after closer to home. I don’t know why Facebook does nothing though.
- ghaff 5y ago
  And a lot of people here would probably be screaming if you did prosecute some immature 20-something picked at random and tossed them in prison for ten years for an ill-considered social media post.
  - w-j-w 5y ago
  - anthony_r 5y ago
    And, so what?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Because tossing people in a hole at random to set an example is not, in general, policy we want to encourage maybe?
      - rask17 5y ago
        Having kids intimidating strangers by throwing around death threats isn't something we should encourage either.
        ghaff 5y ago
        No one is talking about encouraging such behavior. But if the FBI undertakes a serious investigation to track them down, when they get tracked down, they may well end up in a Federal prison for a long time--especially if they can't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for the best legal support. Maybe they deserve to have their life ruined for probably poorly considered juvenile behavior but I'm not sure. There are societal costs associated with pursuing and prosecuting every crime to the max.

by mdasen 5y ago

criddell 5y ago

The police have limited resources and they can’t go after everything. Online stuff is hard because it usually requires cooperation of multiple police forces in different jurisdictions. I think it often just comes down to there being easier things to go after closer to home. I don’t know why Facebook does nothing though.

ghaff 5y ago
And a lot of people here would probably be screaming if you did prosecute some immature 20-something picked at random and tossed them in prison for ten years for an ill-considered social media post.
- w-j-w 5y ago
- anthony_r 5y ago
  And, so what?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Because tossing people in a hole at random to set an example is not, in general, policy we want to encourage maybe?
    - rask17 5y ago
      Having kids intimidating strangers by throwing around death threats isn't something we should encourage either.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        No one is talking about encouraging such behavior. But if the FBI undertakes a serious investigation to track them down, when they get tracked down, they may well end up in a Federal prison for a long time--especially if they can't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for the best legal support. Maybe they deserve to have their life ruined for probably poorly considered juvenile behavior but I'm not sure. There are societal costs associated with pursuing and prosecuting every crime to the max.