Facebook’s callous refusal to help police investigate a girl’s murder proves it is bereft of humanity
There is a huge difficulty in trying to understand the warped psychology of Facebook and the other social media giants. How can these still young companies have departed so far and so quickly from the moral standards of the societies they are supposed to serve?
How is it possible for them to be so hypocritical? How can their senior executives, who presumably live normal domestic lives in which they don’t do very wicked things, behave in so monstrous a fashion in the public arena?
In a way, the latest example of Facebook’s divorce from common decency is the worst. We know it has harvested the information of millions of its users. We realise it was used by the russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
We also understand it pays as little tax as it conceivably can, and that it demonstrates no allegiance towards the countries in which it operates. We have read of how it provides a virtual safe haven online in this country for tens of thousands of predatory paedophiles.
Thwarted
All this is bad enough, but somehow its refusal to cooperate with Hampshire police in their investigation of the murder of a 13-year-old girl is more shocking because it is so nakedly callous, and so bereft of proper human feeling.
The body of Lucy McHugh was found in woodland close to Southampton Sports Centre at the end of July. A postmortem examination established that she had been stabbed to death.
Police arrested care worker Stephen Nicholson, 24, on suspicion of murder and sexual activity with a child. He has not so far been charged in connection with her murder.
But last Friday, Nicholson was jailed for 14 months for refusing to give his Facebook password to detectives investigating the killing. The judge found ‘wholly inadequate’ the protestations of his defence lawyer that providing his password would reveal information about cannabis.
According to the prosecution, Nicholson admitted contact with Lucy on the evening before, and the morning of, her disappearance. The court was told he had been living with her family for months.
So it is hardly surprising that officers should want to examine Nicholson’s Facebook account. Having been thwarted by him, they asked Facebook for his password — and were refused.
As a result, because Facebook is based in America, police have been forced to apply to the U.S. Department of Justice. This is a process that could take six months.
It should surely be obvious to the social media behemoth that if Nicholson is prepared to pay the price of going to prison for 14 months rather than open his account, he might have something to hide.
And Facebook’s morally deficient executives should also grasp that as the murder of a child is a terrible crime, and Nicholson is a suspect, they should do everything in their power to assist the authorities.
If Facebook bosses oversaw a humane organisation grounded in decent values, they would try to imagine how Lucy McHugh’s mother must be feeling, and do whatever they could to help.
Why don’t they? They argue that free speech is sacrosanct. They are unwilling to reveal the private communications of their users for any reason or in any cause, or even to help solve a murder.
It’s all nonsense, of course. For one thing, the supposedly sacred nature of such information did not prevent Facebook from allowing the political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica to access the personal data of tens of millions of its users.
Even more fundamentally, freedom of speech must not trump every other consideration. It is obviously a precious principle, but it should not be applied so uncritically as to hinder the investigation of such serious crimes.
I can think of two possible explanations for Facebook’s devotion to free speech at all costs. One is that the mammoth company, which was founded only 14 years ago, is still infused with Californian-style libertarianism.
The other reason for its moral obduracy is commercial. It is a central part of Facebook’s pitch to users that their data and personal interests will remain private, even though, as we have seen, they were harvested by a private company.
Sinister
And, my goodness, to what lengths Facebook will go! In March 2017, the terrorist Khalid Masood killed six people, including a police officer, in Westminster before being shot dead.
Only three minutes before embarking on his murderous rampage, Masood was using WhatsApp — owned by Facebook — on his smartphone. WhatsApp uses socalled end-to-end encryption. It claims that even its own technicians are unable to read users’ messages.
This turned out to be a misleading response. A month after Masood’s attack, it was reported that our security services had succeeded — without any help from WhatsApp — in decoding his final message, which revealed his sinister motivation.
Facebook plainly has a settled policy not to assist investigators. The Mail reports today that thousands of criminal investigations are being hamstrung by delays in obtaining vital evidence from Facebook.
Last year, our police and security agencies made 14,300 requests for information from Facebook. In 85 per cent of cases, they were forced to make prolonged applications to the U.S. Department of Justice for help.
Nor is it just in Britain that Facebook takes such a highand-mighty attitude towards the criminal justice system. In 2016, Brazilian authorities who were investigating drugtrafficking and organised crime claimed that WhatsApp had refused to divulge information crucial to the case.
One marvels that any company should think itself so far above the law, and so unaccountable either to public opinion or the courts, that it routinely withholds important evidence.
And, believe it or not, whenever information is wrung out of it by police, Facebook feels free to present the taxpayer with a bill. According to its own published guidelines, it may ‘ seek reimbursement for costs’ and ‘ also charge additional fees for costs incurred in responding to unusual or burdensome requests’. Pretty shameless? Needless to say, Facebook is not the only tech giant to behave so preposterously. In 2016, Apple refused to help the FBI unlock the phone of a dead Islamic terrorist who had murdered 14 people. Apple said that to do so would set a ‘chilling precedent’.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Twitter piously sided with Apple, cloaking their beady commercial self- interest in sententious rubbish about free speech. In the end, the FBI managed to open the phone with the help of an Israeli technology company.
Monsters
What is to be done? In the case of Lucy McHugh, I hope ( though without much confidence) that Facebook will listen to the outrage of many politicians, and the request of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, and release the password of Stephen Nicholson to the police.
But whatever happens in this appalling case, it is surely clear that politicians in this country and elsewhere must stop quailing in front of these overmighty, amoral monsters.
It’s time social media giants were forced to stop pretending that they are ‘platforms’ rather than ‘publishers’. And it’s time they were held to account for the false news, hideous trolls and child pornography to which they offer such an accommodating home.
These are vast, greedy monopolies which display precious few signs of having any moral compass. I am amazed they have been allowed to get away with it for so long. They’ll be broken up in the end. But how much more damage will they create before they are?