Undercover Cops Break Facebook Rules to Track Protesters

According to NBC News, October 5, 2018, Facebook is teeming with fake accounts created by undercover law enforcement officers. They're against the rules — but cops keep making them anyway.

In the summer of 2015, as Memphis exploded with protests over the police killing of a 19-year-old man, activists began hearing on Facebook from someone called Bob Smith. The name was generic, and so was his profile picture: a Guy Fawkes mask, the symbol of anti-government dissent.

Smith acted as if he supported the protesters, and, slowly, they let him into their online community. Over the next three years, dozens of them accepted his friend requests, allowing him to observe private discussions over marches, rallies and demonstrations. In public postings and private messages he described himself as a far-left Democrat, a “fellow protester” and a “man of color.”

But Smith was not real. He was the creation of a white detective in the Memphis Police Department’s Office of Homeland Security whose job was to keep tabs on local activists across the spectrum, from Black Lives Matter to Confederate sympathizers.

Police officers around the country, in departments large and small, working for federal, state and local agencies, use undercover Facebook accounts to watch protesters, track gang members, lure child predators and snare thieves, according to court records, police trainers and officers themselves. Some maintain several of these accounts at a time. The tactic violates Facebook’s terms of use, and the company says it disables fake accounts whenever it discovers them. But that is about all it can do: Fake accounts are not against the law, and the information gleaned by the police can be used as evidence in criminal and civil cases.

The only reprisals come from Facebook itself, which says it strictly enforces its ban on users pretending to be someone they’re not. Every day, it says, the company’s “detection technology” blocks millions of attempts to create fake accounts ─ and detects millions more within minutes of creation. But Facebook won’t say how often it has taken action against a law enforcement agency for using fake accounts, only that it has done so “many times.”
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Should law enforcement agencies be able to violate Facebook ToS in order to track protestors? What about non-law enforcement government employees, should they be allowed to infiltrate protest groups? Should a warrant be required - the information gained for infiltrating groups can be used in a criminal trial? 

DOD specifically prohibits this type of activity, with directives stating:

* No information shall be acquired about a person or organization solely because of lawful advocacy of measures in opposition to Government policy.

* There shall be no electronic surveillance of any individual or organization, except as authorized by law.

* There shall be no covert or otherwise deceptive surveillance or penetration of civilian organizations unless specifically authorized by the Secretary of Defense, or his designee.

* No DOD personnel will be assigned to attend public or private meetings, demonstrations, or other similar activities for the purpose of acquiring information, the collection of which is authorized by this Directive without specific prior approval by the Secretary of Defense, or his designee.

We have seen recent examples of protestors becoming violent. Do we want them to be able to organize violent protests on-line, while law enforcement is prohibited from collecting information about these groups?

These undercover investigations on-line catch more than protestors - they also catch sex predators and child pornographers. Surely this is something we want law enforcement to do?

Where do we draw the line with on-line undercover activity?  Should there be a line at all?