Woman Arrested For Spreading Facebook Photos Of Undercover Cop

[Odd]

From Police: Woman Arrested For Spreading Facebook Photos Of Undercover Cop « CBS Houston

Woman Arrested For Spreading Facebook Photos Of Undercover Cop

MESQUITE, Texas (CBS HOUSTON) – A North Texas woman has been arrested after being accused of posting Facebook photos of an undercover policeman who testified against her friend in court.

...

The Dallas Morning News reports that her friend, George Pickens, 34, was upset about the officer’s testimony and found his photograph on Facebook while researching him online.

Pickens’ brother, Bobby Stedham, used the photo to make fliers, and the two men planned to display them like garage sale signs, according to the affidavit. Police reported finding them while searching Pickens’ Dallas-area house.

Stedham, 26, has been charged with retaliation

...

Mitch Landry, the deputy executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association in Austin, said his organization has discussed with its members the perils of social media — particularly for those involved in undercover work.

“Our best advice is — if you don’t want that information out there, don’t have those accounts,” Landry told the newspaper. “There’s no way to be truly anonymous if you have a Facebook page.”

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[Xiphos]

The undercover cop was a dipshit for leaving his photo open on Facebook.

[Odd]

Thing I wonder is with their facial detection and tagging will it even matter if you take down open photos? Once you've given them your name and a reference photo (which is never deleted even if the account is) will uploading an image from the local paper's website, or a cellphone snap, etc, allow someone to reverse lookup you years later? I have my issues with Facebook anyway, but Google and Apple are doing the same thing, this is a more basic question of when you need to go stealth to ever be so. Now to go 'out there' a bit imagine the spy novel Clancy could write around it if he still wrote his own books. Cardinal of the Kernal perhaps? Anyway, enough daydreaming.

Just another headache. Computers: making life easier since *bbzzt* excuse me, got a new Tweet to check.

[MacLean]

I fail to see how this charge can be supported.

He put his picture in the public domain.

[Pudge]

I fail to see how this charge can be supported.

He put his picture in the public domain.

I agree with you. Without researching their section of law at the moment, I wonder if they feel that they can make a case based on the risk to him that could be caused by publicly identifying him as an undercover officer. (Not that he apparently didn't do a good enough job of that on his own.)

[Fernman]

Thing I wonder is with their facial detection and tagging will it even matter if you take down open photos? Once you've given them your name and a reference photo (which is never deleted even if the account is) will uploading an image from the local paper's website, or a cellphone snap, etc, allow someone to reverse lookup you years later? I have my issues with Facebook anyway, but Google and Apple are doing the same thing, this is a more basic question of when you need to go stealth to ever be so. Now to go 'out there' a bit imagine the spy novel Clancy could write around it if he still wrote his own books. Cardinal of the Kernal perhaps? Anyway, enough daydreaming.

Just another headache. Computers: making life easier since *bbzzt* excuse me, got a new Tweet to check.

Face.com, the company that provides FB it's facial recognition software, claims to be only 5 or so years out from open source facial recognition due to the massive storage of peoples photos on social media. Meaning it will be theoretically feasible to take a picture of a complete stranger and learn their identity.

Not to mention stalking from geotags, all kinds of good stuff.