{"id":649,"date":"2021-11-19T00:03:12","date_gmt":"2021-11-18T23:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/facebook-banned-the-new-mexico-civil-guard-now-prosecutors-want-their-account-data-but-facebook-says-its-gone-the-washington-post\/"},"modified":"2021-11-19T00:03:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T23:03:12","slug":"facebook-banned-the-new-mexico-civil-guard-now-prosecutors-want-their-account-data-but-facebook-says-its-gone-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/facebook-banned-the-new-mexico-civil-guard-now-prosecutors-want-their-account-data-but-facebook-says-its-gone-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook banned the New Mexico Civil Guard. Now prosecutors want their account data \u2014 but Facebook says it&#039;s gone. &#8211; The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>In June 2020, a group of men in military-style camouflage, armed with assault rifles, confronted protesters who wanted to topple a statue of a Spanish conquistador in Albuquerque. Shots rang out, and a protester was wounded.<br \/>Though the alleged shooter apparently wasn\u2019t a member of the group, which calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard, prosecutors blamed the organization for fomenting the violence and sought a civil injunction to bar it from acting as a paramilitary organization at future public demonstrations.<br \/>That case hit an unexpected snag, however: Facebook\u2019s own crackdown on extremist groups.<br \/>Prosecutors are demanding that Facebook hand over data that would confirm the identity of group members and page administrators \u2014 but Facebook says those records no longer exist, because it deleted them after it banned the organization as part of an August 2020 content moderation sweep.<br \/>In an era when extremist groups commonly organize online, the legal showdown highlights a tension between the pressure digital platforms face to remove problematic accounts and content, on the one hand, and authorities\u2019 interest in accessing that information for real-world prosecutions, on the other. And it raises questions about what privacy protections, if any, those platforms \u2014 from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube and others \u2014 owe to people and organizations they\u2019ve banned.<br \/>The dispute echoes another ongoing legal battle, in which the African nation of Gambia is pressing Facebook to release deleted account records as part of an international human rights claim against the organizers of Myanmar\u2019s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims. In September, a federal magistrate in Washington, D.C., <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/legal-issues\/facebook-data-myanmar-genocide-rohingya\/2021\/09\/23\/5857fa70-1bfe-11ec-a99a-5fea2b2da34b_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_11\">ordered Facebook to comply<\/a>, ruling that federal privacy laws don\u2019t apply to social media accounts once platforms have suspended or banned them.<br \/>Legal scholars and online privacy experts say these cases and others expose the shortcomings of federal privacy laws written at a time when email was the hot new digital communication technology, and point to a need for legislation that addresses the retention of user records in the social media age.<br \/><span class=\"font--article-body font-copy hide-for-print ma-0 pb-md db italic interstitial\"><a data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2020\/06\/16\/albuquerque-militia-shooting-protest\/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_13\">Former city council candidate arrested after man is shot at New Mexico protest with militia group<\/a><\/span><br \/>On Monday, the district attorney of Bernalillo County, where Albuquerque is located, took the unusual step of asking a court in Facebook\u2019s home state of California to force the company to comply with its subpoena for basic account information related to the New Mexico Civil Guard group and its members. The move comes after talks between District Attorney Raul Torrez\u2019s team and Facebook hit a stalemate, with Facebook insisting it doesn\u2019t have the records but declining to offer a sworn affidavit that it is incapable of retrieving them.<br \/>The New Mexico Civil Guard organized, recruited, taught paramilitary tactics and guided members\u2019 actions via Facebook, Torrez said at a news conference Monday. If Facebook really deletes all traces of such groups when it takes down their pages and accounts, that calls into question how serious Facebook is about preventing them from resurfacing on the platform, let alone aiding real-world investigations into such groups, he added.<br \/>\u201cWe find it hard to believe that a trillion-dollar company would be in a position where they would have deleted this information and have no way to retrieve it,\u201d Torrez said.<br \/>Facebook pointed out that it does offer a clear process by which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/safety\/groups\/law\/guidelines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">authorities can request that the company preserve data<\/a> that might be relevant to investigations, as long as they do so in a timely manner.<br \/>\u201cWe preserve account information in response to a request from law enforcement and will provide it, in accordance with applicable law and our terms, when we receive valid legal process,\u201d said Andy Stone, Facebook\u2019s policy communications director, in an emailed statement. \u201cWhen we preserve data, we do so for a period of time, which can be extended at the request of law enforcement.\u201d<br \/><span class=\"font--article-body font-copy hide-for-print ma-0 pb-md db italic interstitial\"><a data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/legal-issues\/facebook-data-myanmar-genocide-rohingya\/2021\/09\/23\/5857fa70-1bfe-11ec-a99a-5fea2b2da34b_story.html?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_25\">U.S. judge rules Facebook must turn over closed accounts that fed Myanmar genocide<\/a><\/span><br \/>Aiding New Mexico prosecutors in the case is Georgetown University\u2019s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which also aided in a Virginia case for an injunction against several of the groups that participated in the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Mary McCord, the institute\u2019s executive director, said Facebook\u2019s response is insufficient.<br \/>Facebook should know that records related to organizations and people it deems dangerous under its \u201creal-world harm\u201d policies are, almost by definition, likely to be of interest to authorities, and should preserve them accordingly, McCord argued. Authorities can\u2019t always know at the beginning of an investigation exactly which records they\u2019ll need, or who all the suspects are, she noted.<br \/>Some advocates caution, however, that asking social networks to permanently store data on deleted accounts would amount to surveillance overreach.<br \/>\u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to live in a world where everything that Facebook takes down, it just keeps in a big database,\u201d said Dia Kayyali, associate director of advocacy at Mnemonic, a nonprofit that works on documenting human rights violations. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen through the Facebook Oversight Board how many false positives Facebook has in its content moderation, particularly around its \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/10\/12\/facebook-secret-blacklist-dangerous\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dangerous individuals and organizations\u2019 policy<\/a>.\u201d<br \/>The privacy rights of people whose communications are stored online are defined federally by the Stored Communications Act, part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. But that act was designed around email providers that acted as conduits of information, not social networks that actively police their platforms. It\u2019s silent on the status of accounts or posts that have been removed for policy violations.<br \/>McCord noted, however, that the information prosecutors are seeking in this case is not the actual content of users\u2019 posts, as in the Gambia case, but metadata about their accounts, which enjoy fewer privacy protections under the law.<br \/>\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d said Orin Kerr, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. \u201cPeople want the providers to moderate. And then they want the information to be available when they want it to be available.\u201d<br \/>\u201cExactly what should be kept and what should be available is a relatively new question\u201d in the law, Kerr added, \u201cand there\u2019s uncertainty as to what the rules should be.\u201d<br \/>Facebook said in October that it would support modernizing the Stored Communications Act to allow \u201ca broader range of disclosures for significant investigations &#8230; while avoiding a precedent that risks the privacy and human rights of billions of people.\u201d<br \/>Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said she believes there should be federal legislation to give companies clear guidelines on when to save or delete user data.<br \/>\u201cI don\u2019t think Facebook, Twitter or whoever should be deciding what to do with the data. That\u2019s the real problem,\u201d Beirich said. \u201cAt the end of the day, there should be rules.\u201d<br \/>Privacy laws aside, prosecutors are hoping the California court will help them get to the bottom of whether Facebook really deleted all of its data on the New Mexico Civil Guard accounts. Their petition also calls on the court to compel Facebook to disclose internal communications around its decision-making to retain or delete the records in question. If granted, that could offer new insight into how Facebook itself weighs the trade-offs around data retention and disclosure.<br \/>The civil case against the New Mexico Civil Guard is separate from an ongoing criminal case against the suspected shooter, Steven Ray Baca. An attorney for the New Mexico Civil Guard members named in the case did not respond to a request for comment.<br \/>News<span class=\"pl-xxs\">\u2022<\/span><br \/>Analysis<span class=\"pl-xxs\">\u2022<\/span><br \/>News<span class=\"pl-xxs\">\u2022<\/span><br \/>The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning.<br \/>By signing up you agree to our<!-- --> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/terms-of-service\/2011\/11\/18\/gIQAldiYiN_story.html\" class=\"gray-dark font--meta-text font-xxxxs mt-xxs pb-lgmod\" tabindex=\"-1\">Terms of Use<\/a> <!-- -->and<!-- --> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/privacy-policy\/2011\/11\/18\/gIQASIiaiN_story.html\" class=\"gray-dark underline hover-inherit\" tabindex=\"-1\">Privacy\u00a0Policy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2021\/11\/15\/facebook-new-mexico-civil-guard\/\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In June 2020, a group of men in military-style camouflage, armed with assault rifles, confronted protesters who wanted to topple a statue of a Spanish conquistador in Albuquerque. Shots rang out, and a protester was wounded.Though the alleged shooter apparently wasn\u2019t a member of the group, which calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard, prosecutors [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}