[LINK] Oz: 'Facebook hits back in spat with AFP'

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Tue Jun 1 08:41:14 AEST 2010


[Taking this article at face value, Facebook 1 AFP 0!]

Facebook hits back in spat with Australian Federal Police
Caitlin Fitzsimmons
The Australian
May 31, 2010 12:00AM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/facebook-hits-back-in-spat-with-australian-federal-police/story-e6frg996-1225873247259

FACEBOOK has hit back at criticism of its dealings with Australian 
law enforcement, branding the Australian Federal Police as "entirely 
unresponsive" to communication from the social networking site.

Joe Sullivan, chief security officer at Facebook in Palo Alto, 
California, told The Australian the comments made last week by Neil 
Gaughan, assistant commissioner at the Australian Federal Police, 
were "astonishing".

"We've had several outstanding requests to him for information or 
assistance," Mr Sullivan said. "To see him complaining about us when 
he's been entirely unresponsive is incredibly frustrating."

A spokesman for the AFP said it had "detailed documentary evidence" 
showing the agency had made "significant contact" with Facebook 
trying to resolve enforcement issues.

"Claims made by Facebook that the AFP failed to communicate or 
respond are not accurate. Any suggestion contrary to this is 
misleading," the spokesman said.

Mr Gaughan was quoted in Fairfax newspapers last week saying that 
Facebook should amend its law enforcement guidelines to take account 
of Australian legal terminology. He cited one instance where Facebook 
had ignored a warrant because it was issued by a judicial officer 
rather than a court.

Before flying to Washington DC for a meeting on child pornography at 
the US Department of Justice last week, Mr Gaughan claimed the 
current situation "could lead to a loss of life".

But Mr Sullivan said Facebook's global law enforcement guidelines did 
not use legal terminology, rather provided information on how to 
contact the site. This included a 24-hour hotline for police to use.

He added that earlier this year, the Facebook security team drafted 
law enforcement guidelines specifically for Australia and these were 
sent to Mr Gaughan and the Attorney-General's office at the beginning 
of March for review.

He said he had received a response from the Attorney-General's office 
but nothing from Mr Gaughan.

Mr Sullivan said he was also waiting for feedback from Mr Gaughan on 
the idea of training designated law enforcement officers on the 
complex laws governing the collection of online data, a proposal that 
had emerged from discussions between Facebook and the Australian 
Attorney-General's office. Mr Gaughan had failed to respond to 
several queries about unfamiliar forms of search warrant as well, he 
said.

Jurisdiction has become a major issue for Australian police dealing 
with mostly US-based social networking sites. State and federal 
police have reported difficulties in forcing California-based 
Facebook to comply with Australian police requests or court warrants 
and suggested the website should appoint an Australian-based liaison 
to give law enforcement a single point of contact.

Mr Sullivan argued that Facebook did have a dedicated liaison person 
for law enforcement in Australia -- Genevieve Ovalle. She is based in 
California but was in Australia at the National Telecommunications 
Conference in Sydney last month, along with representatives from the 
Attorney-General's office, the AFP and state police agencies.

Mr Sullivan said no one in law enforcement had asked Facebook to 
appoint a dedicated person in Australia and rejected the notion that 
this would be an advantage.

"The data is stored in the United States and the tools that we use to 
access the data are here in the United States and our team is staffed 
to have people on call during the week, during the weekend, and at 
night, so physical location is really not going to impact that in the 
least," Mr Sullivan said. "We support law enforcement requests from 
all over the world and to decentralise our team in that way would 
probably create inefficiencies rather than efficiencies."

In the case of the death of Sydney teenager Nona Belomesoff two weeks 
ago, Mr Sullivan said Facebook was contacted for investigative 
support by police in Australia at 10pm California time, responded by 
11pm, and provided the requested data by 2am.

When asked if he would be prepared to consider the idea of basing a 
police liaison in Australia, he added: "I would want to understand 
what the underlying issues that they were hoping to address are. We 
would be willing to discuss any issue of concern that they have."

Mr Sullivan claimed that prior to last week he had believed 
Facebook's relations with Australian law enforcement to be very 
positive. He added: It was very disappointing and incredibly 
frustrating to see characterisations that had never been communicated 
to us by them.

Mr Sullivan said had been unable to contact Mr Gaughan since the 
comments were published but he hoped to have a conversation with him 
next week once he returned to Australia.

However, Mr Sullivan said Facebook had an outstanding relationship 
with the Attorney-General's office, with at least five in-person 
meetings over the past two years. He said Facebook followed the 
advice of the Attorney-General's office whenever it received 
unfamiliar police requests and warrants.


[Facebook is a member of IIA:
http://www.iia.net.au/index.php/members-a-h/736-facebook-inc-.html
and Facebook's 'Policy Consultant' toured recently:
http://www.iia.net.au/index.php/component/content/article/80/826-mozelle-thompson-facebook-on-mandatory-isp-filtering.html 
]


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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