Social networking sites becoming a tool of the state

Pic: Facebook

Yes, Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life. But it can also help people connect with you when you really don’t want them to. A couple of stories in the UK today reflect, depending on your stance, the state’s paranoia or awareness regarding social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

The Home Office has introduced proposals to enable the UK government to monitor these websites on national security grounds. The idea is for Facebook et al to be required to keep details of users’ contacts, to tackle organised criminals and terrorists who might use the sites.

So far it sounds fairly sensible, if a little intrusive. But here’s the bit that confuses me: if criminals and terrorists are using Facebook, for example, why is the government happy to let the content from their profiles disappear into the ether? If these people are organising on social networking sites, surely the content matters too in many cases?

It’s almost as if the government is proposing as much interference as it thinks it can get away with.

Story number two is from this morning’s Metro, a free newspaper distributed as sensationalist background reading to commuters. It reports that “Benefits bosses are trawling profiles on Facebook to catch cheats”.

I’d like to think I’m sure they’re not actually “trawling”, but rather checking existing cases. But the idea that the benefits authorities have this readily available surveillance tool at their disposal is something that wouldn’t have been considered three years ago. If you’re claiming certain benefits, openly flouting the restrictions (like living with a partner that the authorities don’t know about) is pretty cast-iron evidence. People aren’t careful what they say and share.

So is all this right or wrong? As always, there are two sides of the argument here. Government, including national government which is proposing Facebook monitoring and local government which is already using it to hunt down benefit fraudsters, believes that it should be allowed to use all available routes in tackling crime, terrorism and fraud. But the civil liberties lobby, usually headed by Shami Chakrabarti, argues simply that we have a right to privacy.

What do you think about the relationship between crime, civil liberties and human rights?

I think the government proposals miss the point slightly, because if the genuine intention is to check out who knows who, the content of those conversations could be vital. But, if it’s just a characteristic of the nanny state, its opponents will be in the right.

Of course the solution – and naturally the people with something to hide will be the first to realise this – is not to post anything incriminating on a public medium, and not to become friends with the rest of one’s terrorist cell on Facebook. However, that doesn’t necessarily make the authorities right on this issue.