Facebook’s Not Private
Anyone who uses social media has heard the advice: If you want to keep something secret, don’t post it on Facebook. Which is why Manhattan DA Cy Vance is absolutely right to defend his office’s bid to seize data from 300-plus “private” user accounts in a criminal investigation.
In a highly unusual move, Vance personally argued his case Tuesday before the state’s highest court, the New York Court of Appeals, that some things are more important than individual privacy.
Particularly if those individuals are criminally ripping off the taxpayers.
It all goes back to 2014, when Vance filed the seizure warrant in a probe of Social Security ripoffs by NYPD and FDNY retirees, which has now convicted over 100 people.
The Post wrote dozens of stories about these scams — people getting disability benefits as supposedly too ill to work, but whose social-media photos showed them engaging in strenuous physical activities.
Vance wanted to get at the photos of suspected scammers who’d blocked non-friends from seeing their pics, “to give us an indication whether they were in fact disabled.”
The DA also obtained a gag order on the seizure to prevent those being targeted from deleting their information.
Vance compared it to any other search warrant; in fact, it’s even more legit — since Facebook and other social media are mostly, and in some cases entirely, public platforms. You’re putting stuff “out there” to at least a limited audience — which has the power to copy and pass along what you publish.
Facebook is not a “sanctuary medium” — users have no reasonable expectation that they can boast of criminality online and prevent prosecutors from finding out.
Was the seizure order overly broad, constituting unreasonable search and seizure? Not if the ripoff scheme was just as broad.
Nor was any innocent harmed in any way — it’s not like the prosecutors cared about anything except what they were looking for.
We hope the court agrees that the only “chilling” thing here is the ability of scammers to give law enforcement the finger.