Posted on 10/08/2014 3:29:20 AM PDT by Wolfie
Federal Court Says the Government Can Impersonate You on Social Media — and There’s Not Much You Can Do About It
Imagine finding out you have a Facebook page that you didn’t actually create. It has your name, your private photos and all of your personal information — none of which you posted.
That’s the discovery New York resident Sondra Prince made.
Prince, formerly Sondra Arquiett, alleges that after she was arrested on drug charges in 2010, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used the photos on her confiscated cellphone to create Facebook profile in her name and without her consent. It was only when one of her friends asked her about the photos that she found out, BuzzFeed reported.
DEA agent Timothy Sinnigen, the agent who set up the fake profile, allegedly made contact with at least one known fugitive while pretending to be Arquiett, according to Gizmodo. Arquiett’s fake profile, which is still active, shows photos of her sitting on the hood of a car in shorts and a tank top and holding two young children, whom BuzzFeed reported to be her son and niece.
In June 2013, Arquiett filed a formal complaint against Sinnigen on the grounds that her privacy was violated. However, the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of New York ruled the DEA did nothing to overstep its authority.
“Defendants admit that Plaintiff did not give express permission for the use of photographs contained on her phone on an undercover Facebook page, but state the Plaintiff implicitly consented by granting access to the information stored in her cell phone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in an ongoing criminal investigations,” the court said.
Therefore, the court went on to state, “Plaintiff does not have a First Amendment Right to Privacy in the photographs.”
But privacy experts aren’t buying the court’s justification.
“I may allow someone to come into my home and search but that doesn’t mean they can take the photos from my coffee table and post them online,” University of Pennsylvania law professor Anita Allen told BuzzFeed.
University of California law professor Elizabeth Joh called it a “dangerous expansion” of the idea of consent given the amount of information people store on their phones.
Regarding new technologies, Washington University law professor Neil Richards said, “There are a whole bunch of new things that are possible, and we don’t have rules for them yet.”
The DEA deferred a request for comment from TheBlaze to the U.S. attorney’s office for the northern district of New York, citing the “ongoing litigation matter.” A U.S. attorney’s office representative could not be reached.
Arquiett pleaded guilty to the drug charges in February 2011. Prosecutors later found that Arquiett was not as involved in the drug ring as they initially thought, so they recommended a reduced sentence rather than a life sentence she would have been serving. The court lessened her sentence to five years of probation, including six months of weekend incarceration and another six months of home detention, though a probation officer terminated the remainder of her sentence in March.
It appears she could also sue for false arrest.
“Plaintiff does not have a First Amendment Right to Privacy in the photographs.”
I thought that privacy rights came from the fourth and fifth Amendments.
The "Court" is obviously run by al Qaeda or the DO"J"
since her protection is from the 4th Amendment
now which depends upon the color of one's skin.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be searched,
and the persons or things to be seized.
Our ancestors would be shooting by now.
If we didn’t start shooting when they started taking our cash and property, sometimes without even filing charges, we’re not going to start now. And that’s been going on for 25 years or so, although some people seem to think it just started. And like asset forfieture, Governmental identity theft will be “okay” as long as they’re doing it to “those” people.
She made the mistake of authorizing them access to her phone.
They still don’t have the right to create an FB account.
The separation of powers has morphed into The Three Amigo’s, The Three Musketeers, one for all and all for one.
These Feral courts are so far out of control it’s unreal. The founding fathers never meant for any court to have this much power. Americans no longer have any say in their government. It was never supposed to be that way.
She needs to start a FB page for agent Timothy Sinnigen. I hear he likes dressing in nylons and “meeting” guys - 2 and 3 at a time.
??? Above it said that they confiscated the cell phone.
So what's this ‘implicit crap’ ?
Specifically what did she agree to?
How hard would it be for someone to create a fake Facebook page for DEA agent Timothy Sinnigen? You can even post his personal information on there -- including his home address and the school(s) his children attend.
Then watch how interesting things get when "Timothy" starts bragging about his involvement in the arrest of every high-profile drug warlord in the country over the last few decades.
LOL. You beat me to it.
I have nothing better going on today...
I’m old and not much good good anything but I can still hit the black rings and I can walk all day if need be.
Not only are we not shooting, but we do nothing at all, we don’t even write to our representatives about these daily, stepwise assaults on our constitutional rights.
Which begs the question: In general, why are people (us, in this case) who have everything to lose so docile in the face of creeping oppression?
You see it all through history: the mass of people oppressed by the few.
Personally, I think it’s because we are all so fat and happy that we just can’t be bothered. Thus history is the tale of one tragedy after another...
This is why the Feds are whining and moaning about the new improvements in secure smartphone tech.
Far too many conservatives argue that there is no Constitutional right to privacy. Then they use that "fact" to argue against the SCOTUS ruling in Roe v. Wade, which cites the "right to privacy" as justification for the Court's position.
I agree that there is a "right to privacy" implicit in the fourth, fifth and ninth amendments.
But the fact is that no amendment directly mentions such a right, and it always outrages me to hear conservatives argue that the right therefore doesn't exist.
I think the "right to privacy" argument ought to be a staple of lawsuits against the IRS overstepping its bounds. Just because the Constitution authorizes an income tax doesn't mean the IRS can do anything it decides it needs to do to take our money.
Try impersonating a government agent and see what happens.
if she were sustain some injury - say a robbery as a result of the fb pages existence, she’d have a better leg to get some justice as a result of their negligence
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