Italian Police Use Facebook to Capture Mafia Fugitive

Italian Police Use Facebook to Capture Mafia Fugitive

mashable.com

Suspected Italian mafioso Pasquale Manfredi was apprehended in the southern region of Calabria thanks to his Facebook contacts.

BBC News reports that Italian police have used the suspect’s network of connections on the popular social networking site to ascertain his whereabouts. One of the country’s top 100 most-wanted suspects, Manfredi was reportedly arrested trying to escape from the rooftop of an apartment complex in the city of Crotone.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
news.bbc.co.uk
www.foxnews.com
content.usatoday. com

It comes as no surprise that law enforcement is using social media outlets to fight crime these days. Privacy has always been and ongoing issue with social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. It's often easy to forget how public this information really is. Even with some of the available privacy settings in place, it's likely that law enforcement - especially federal law enforcement such as the FBI - would be given special privilege to view privatized information if the user was of particular interest.

Just another reminder to always watch what you post about yourself online. Those seemingly off-the-cuff posts about that guy you just beat up or that new stuff you just smoked may lead to an arrest in your future.

mashable.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I just came across another link regarding the FBI's use of social media sites to track fugitives. This one came from the USA Today source link posted in the original post.

The FBI and other federal agencies are going undercover on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networks with phony profiles to gather information and communicate with suspects, according to an internal Justice Department document.

FBI agents, for example, have used Facebook to determine the whereabouts of a fugitive. Other investigators can check alibis by comparing stories a suspect tells police with their tweets sent at the same time.

Source

Quite interesting...