Sophos Cloud Optix
Despite specific threats to kill a 12-year-old cancer patient along with the entire population of a Texas town, Facebook initially stonewalled police’s efforts to find the identity of whoever was making the terrorist threats.
Only after a baffled, frustrated assistant district attorney on Saturday posted a warning to the entire town of Splendora did Facebook release the suspect’s identity.
As it turns out, the suspect, who allegedly hid behind a fake Facebook account to post threats, is a 13-year-old girl with an unknown motive.
At least one of the threats late last week came with a specific date:
I am going to kill everyone in Splendora on July 13, 2014.
Other threats singled out specific young people in the area.
One of those targeted was 12-year-old leukemia patient Cristian Beasley.
Cristian told the NY Daily News that he became physically ill and went into hiding with his father after receiving the first of several messages along those lines.
The first night I got it, the message, it was kind of scary.
I felt like I was getting watched and I couldn't sleep that night and later that night I got sick ... I thought someone was trying to hunt me down or something.
His mother, Amy Gaskamp, told the newspaper that by the next morning, threats were also going out to Cristian’s Facebook friends:
There was like a ton of them, telling them that they should hang themselves. If they didn't have the guts to do it themselves she'd do it for them. Just terrible things.
The 13-year-old girl, who was taken into juvenile detention late on Sunday, was arrested under suspicion of making third-degree felony terroristic threats.
Despite repeated requests, Facebook had refused to help police figure out who was behind the threats, said Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Phil Grant.
It was late on Saturday when Facebook officials finally agreed to cooperate, giving authorities what they needed to trace the teen to where she was staying for the summer, Grant reportedly said.
But when officials first contacted Facebook, the company stonewalled, arguing that the threat didn’t rise to the level of an emergency.
It wasn’t like the local police had never hit up Facebook for help before, the obviously frustrated Grant told an interviewer on Saturday, before Facebook finally decided to cooperate:
It's easy. They've done it before. I don't know why they're stonewalling in this case.
Unfortunately, the easiest and quickest way to get to the bottom of this would be for Facebook to stop stonewalling us.
If somebody gets hurt tomorrow, it's not because law enforcement hasn't done what it's supposed to do. It's going to be because Facebook, unfortunately, doesn't seem to grasp the seriousness of this type of circumstances.
On Saturday afternoon, Grant posted a public release in which he described Facebook’s “stubborn and irresponsible” lack of cooperation as being “incomprehensible.”
While most threats like these are young people making idle threats they never plan to carry out, in this day and age we cannot ignore or dismiss threats of this nature.
[Police officers] and our office have done everything in our power to track down the individual responsible for these threats and determine the seriousness of their intentions.
Unfortunately, due to Facebook’s incomprehensible lack of cooperation, we now have to take the extraordinary step of placing an entire community on notice of a threat we could have eliminated but for their stubborn and irresponsible position.
Why is the focus on Facebook in this case, rather than the 13-year-old girl? Because kids do stupid things like this all the time.
Most of the things kids post on social media are meant as jokes, or pranks, or simple misbehaving that comes from young people caught in the misery of adolescence.
But too many online threats are anything but idle.
Police have to investigate each and every one of the threats that rise to the level of potential terrorism.
We look to Facebook and other data-rich social media giants to protect us from warrantless search and from investigators – be they local law or the National Security Agency (NSA) – on information fishing expeditions.
This was obviously not one of those instances.
A Facebook spokesperson told me this:
We promptly review and respond to all emergency requests. In this case, we reviewed the matter and asked the police to send us legal process or a court order for the requested information.
…which doesn’t really explain why this case is different from others in which it might have acted more speedily.
From the way Grant describes it, in most cases, Facebook generally helps police quickly, easily get to the bottom of such threats.
Too bad Facebook couldn’t react more quickly this time, for whatever reason. It could have saved a whole town a few days of terror and calls to the emergency line, and it could have saved one very frightened cancer patient from sleepless nights.
Images of social media silhouette and girl on steps courtesy of Shutterstock.
No warrant or court order? I say good on Facebook for not caving (at least for a while). The precedent of blatant data requests being honored (even if it is for a criminal) without any formal appeal to a court is ridiculous, cancerous, and needs to be stopped.
Why they chose not to honor this but did to others is beyond me. However, they should have gone to the courthouse before asking them (as in, do it the way the 4th amendment was designed to work).
People defending the police department for repeatedly asking them should consider that it was never mentioned that they got a warrant or court order. If Facebook had denied them when they had the backing of the law, then there would be trouble.
All the police had to do was get a Judge involved, show the threat and get legal permission to force Facebook to give up the info. The threats were pretty specific.
Disappointed that you would side with law enforcement here. If it was a true emergency they should have obtained a warrant. Facebook has clear guidelines in place for law enforcement to follow in this regard.
This kind of public pressure, to give in to police demands for information, is what erodes our right to privacy protections online. And your article only serves to put public pressure on Facebook further to comply with any and all law enforcement requests that are deemed to be “emergencies” (sans warrant, of course).
Facebook is not law enforcement and does not know what does or does not constitute an “emergency”. That is why we have a system of due process in the United States (and Texas).
The only incompetence I see here is on the part of Texas law enforcement.
I can’t make comments about something there is very little data to support any conclusions at this point. It’s very typical to assign guilt when little is known about the actual truth. What they all seem to be missing is the common sense that we take for granted is no longer with us. I don’t know what the police asked for, one account or 5,000 accounts. Could Facebook have just looked [for them] to see if they can identify someone, what is stonewalling from their viewpoint.
There are too many variables for someone, at this point, to say who’s bad and who’s not bad. We get articles that say Facebook should not give in, then this one why won’t they give it to them? You seem to be on the same fence that many of us are on, but decide to blast someone. How about the facts and let us decide on who is who?
Add to this that ‘children’ is an excuse to do many things to ‘protect’ them, when mostly it’s not even relevant, but sounds good. Facebook seems to be the worst at having any kind of common sense, let alone using it. Seems to be a lost cause in the world today. Facebook can’t even let relatives of the deceased get into their accounts after death, even when asked by the dying.
Too much missing information to make any kind of judgment on this, at this time. Be like the typical legal system and take 5 years to come to some conclusion that the expect someone to make an ‘on the moment’ conclusion and then judge them???
Jack
Checking with Grant to see if they did in fact have a warrant. Lord, I would imagine so—he’s an assistant DA, after all, and this wasn’t the first time they’ve hit up Facebook. You’d think they know the drill by now. I’ll update when I find out.
p.s. and yes, I am guilty for having made the assumption that they had a warrant. Should have checked on that before filing the story. Mea culpa.
So what did you find out?
Did they or did they not have a warrant?
No response yet. I’ll try them again today. Doesn’t look good. Looking like I well might have scolded the entirely wrong party. Hard to imagine that an assistant DA would have the gall to take a company to task when he didn’t even present Facebook with a warrant, but I’m still trying to get to the bottom of that.
I’m surprised to see the author siding with extrajudicial handing over of personal or private information. It should have been pretty easy to get a warrant under these circumstances, and follow the rules and procedures that exist for exactly these kinds of situations. This is a non-story, Facebook did the right thing here.
Surely Sophos doesn’t advocate private companies handing over personal and private data without being compelled by the court — there’s too much potential for abuse otherwise.
As I understand it, Sophos is an English company, and as such the author might not be aware of the fairly stringent requirement that a prosecutor, by affidavit, must allege facts sufficient to show probable cause that a crime has been committed before a warrant will issue.
I agree with the posters who side with the Fourth Amendment. Either the prosecutor knew he didn’t have probable cause and just went ahead and made the request to Facebook, or requested a warrant and, after it had been denied, importuned Facebook.
Sophos is British, but I’m a US citizen, and therefore aware of the requirements for a warrant. As I said in previous comments, I made the mistake of assuming that an assistant DA who professes to have gone through this information discovery process with Facebook multiple times in the past would have of course shown up with a warrant in hand. That might have been a mistaken assumption. and I’m now trying to ascertain the timing of when they got a warrant, though I haven’t yet received a response. I’ll try them again today. And again, my apologies for having assumed that a DA’s office wouldn’t pull a hare-brained move like trying to get data without a warrant.
I’m surprised at the comments supporting Facebook. Surely a look at the threatening items should be enough for Facebook to act immediately without waiting on court warrants.. The DA should have asked the Facebook official what he planned to tell the Coroner.
That kind of fear based response is one of the bigger problems this country has right now. Due process is there for a reason, and it keeps getting tossed out the window because of knee-jerk reactions.
This girl needs psychological assistance. NOW.
“… 12-year-old leukemia patient Cristian Beasley …”
“… Cristian’s Facebook friends …”
I thought Facebook’s policy prohibited children under 13 from joining?
It does, but they’ve never listened. Some people I know made Facebook accounts at 10 or 11 years old.
I agree that a warrant should be the first step but I am constantly confused by some of the things that FB does. I commend them for waiting for proper legal protocol to be followed but I wish that they would find a balance point on some of their puritanical behaviors.
Love your articles!
My goodness. Why would this 13 year old girl threaten a poor boy, who is in the hospital (Probably Cristian is in the hospital, didn’t see that written, if it was written I must have missed it). This was CERTAINTLY a terrorist threat to the citizens of Splendora. I’m not saying that I’m on the 13 yr olds side, but of course, us kids do some pretty stuborn things. I’m a 13 year old, but I have NEVER threatned to kill ANYONE.