NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors building a sweeping
disabilities-benefit fraud case got a trove of data from the Facebook
accounts of more than 380 people, the social media giant said this week
as it disclosed a nearly yearlong legal fight over the largest set of
search warrants it has ever received.
Facebook ultimately turned
over the information but is appealing the court order that required it
to do so, saying prosecutors intruded on users’ privacy. The Manhattan
district attorney’s office and a judge have said the search warrants
were justified.
The dispute adds to a roster of clashes between
authorities and Internet companies over law enforcement efforts to
scrutinize people’s online lives for potential evidence.
"It’s
part of a trend toward more aggressive challenges by Internet providers
on behalf of their customers," said Orin Kerr, a George Washington
University law professor who specializes in issues surrounding computers
and crime.
It began secretly last July, when Manhattan Criminal
Court Judge Melissa Jackson approved 381 search warrants for various
Facebook users’ postings, friend lists, photos, private messages and
other data, according to court filings unsealed Wednesday and first
reported by The New York Times. The users ranged from high school
students to grandparents, Facebook said in a filing last week.
Sixty-two
of those users are among the 134 people charged in the case, Deputy
General Counsel Chris Sonderby wrote in a blog post Thursday. It’s
unclear whether other users will be charged.
The warrants aimed to
gather evidence against police and fire retirees allegedly coached to
claim they were too psychologically devastated to work even as they
golfed, rode motorcycles and otherwise led robust lives — and sometimes
posted the alleged proof on Facebook. More than half of the 134
defendants so far have pleaded guilty. Prosecutors say up to 1,000
people may have been involved and more charges could come.
Menlo
Park, California-based Facebook argued the warrants cast a net as wide
as "the digital equivalent of seizing everything in someone’s home."
"Except here, it is not a single home but an entire neighborhood of nearly 400 homes," the
company wrote in last week’s filing.
But prosecutors say they gave the judge a 93-page explanation of why each targeted account would likely
yield evidence.
"The
defendants in this case repeatedly lied to the government about their
mental, physical, and social capabilities. Their Facebook accounts told a
different story," DA’s office spokeswoman Joan Vollero said in a
statement Friday.
Jackson rebuffed Facebook’s objections in a
now-unsealed September ruling, saying law enforcement has "the authority
to search and seize a massive amount of material to seek evidence,"
even if some of the items turn out to be irrelevant.
An appeals
court declined in November to hold off Jackson’s order while Facebook’s
appeal plays out.
Facebook then surrendered the information.
Over
the years, online companies have sometimes prevailed in pushing back on
authorities’ demands for information about their users. They also have
lost some fights; Twitter, for instance, objected but ultimately acceded
to Manhattan prosecutors’ demands for three months of tweets by an
Occupy Wall Street protester in a disorderly conduct case. Twitter had
been threatened with steep fines; the company later lost an appeal of
the court order that had required turning over material.