Following the start of the lawsuit of Sondra Arquiett accusing a DEA agent of impersonating her, Facebook intervenes

Oct 20, 2014 09:53 GMT  ·  By

Facebook is not just going to sit there and let the Drug Enforcement Administration break its rules, no matter what the purpose of the mission was. The company has sent the DEA a letter in which it criticizes its way of conducting operations.

Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, has written to the DEA, addressing the letter to Michele Leonhart, administrator of the agency.

He talked about the case regarding Sondra Arquiett, a woman who has sued the anti-drug agency and a DEA agent for using her mobile phone data, including her personal pictures, to set up a fake Facebook account.

The agents used pictures of her in her underwear and more and posted them on the social network, while pretending to be Arquiett. The agent impersonated the woman, sent out friend requests and waited around until she was contacted by individuals that were on the DEA’s radar.

The DEA justified the move saying that she had granted access to the information stored in her cell phone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in ongoing criminal investigations. Of course, no one told her that this would entail having someone pose as her on Facebook.

“Most fundamentally, the DEA’s actions threaten the integrity of our community. Facebook strives to maintain a safe, trusted environment where people can engage in authentic interactions with the people they know and meet in real life. Using Facebook to impersonate others abuses that trust and makes people feel less safe and secure when using our service,” Sullivan writes.

He adds that the company has observed that deceptive actions are often used to further harmful conduct, such as trolling, hate speech, scams, bullying, and even domestic violence. “This impact is markedly different from undercover investigations in the ‘real’ world,” Facebook said.

DEA violates Facebook's policies

That being said, the DEA’s actions violate Facebook’s terms and community standards, which the agent had to acknowledge and agree to when signing up for the fake Facebook account. “Claiming to be another person, creating a false presence for an organization, or creating multiple accounts undermines community and violates Facebook’s terms,” Facebook’s rules read.

These are listed right next to the rules regarding not providing any false personal information, creating an account for someone else without permission, posting content that infringes or violates other people’s rights and so on.

Those policies don’t just apply to regular users, but also to DEA agents. “We regard the DEA’s conduct to be a knowing and serious breach of Facebook’s terms and policies, and the account created by the agent in the Arquiett matter has been disabled.”

Furthermore, Facebook demands that the DEA immediately confirm that it has ceased all activities on Facebook that involve impersonation of others or that otherwise violate the terms and policies.