14 DAY TRIAL // Privacy means nothing nowadays and that couldn’t be clearer than what’s been happening to a woman in the United States, for whom a DEA agent created a phony Facebook account and posted racy pictures he found on the cell phone they had seized from her.
Buzzfeed notes that not only has the DEA violated her privacy, taken her identity and created a fake online account, but the Justice Department claims the federal agent had every right to impersonate the young woman, while defending the agent’s right to go through the woman’s seized phone and post pictures online.
Sondra Arquiett, who in 2010 was going by the name of Sondra Prince, found out about her brand new Facebook profile from a friend, who was asking about the pictures getting posted online – shots in which she was wearing short shorts, where her legs were spread on top of the BMW, or in which she appeared with her young son and niece.
Her surprise was even bigger considering that she hadn’t actually set up such an account on the social network. Instead, behind the name and the pictures was a Drug Enforcement Administration agent called Timothy Sinnigen.
Arquiett had been arrested and accused of being part of a drug ring. The single mom admitted to her role and the judge sentences her to probation. The contents of her phone, however, continued to be in the possession of the DEA and they were getting posted for the world to see. On the side, Sinnigen talked to one wanted fugitive while impersonating the woman.
As the Justice Department is trying to justify the agent’s actions, Facebook states that its policy is clear and doesn’t bend for law enforcement. “Claiming to be another person, creating a false presence for an organization, or creating multiple accounts undermines community and violates Facebook’s terms,” states the Community Standards.
The woman is suing the DEA agent
None of this would have made it in the media if Arquiett hadn’t sued Sinnigen for creating a fake account in her name and using her pictures.
The documentation from the case indicates that the government does its best to defend the agent, saying that while Arquiett may not have given her consent for anyone to use the photographs on her phone or to create a fake Facebook page, she did agree to give access to info on her phone and to use that information to aid “in an ongoing criminal investigation.”
Exactly how the US government believes that helping in an ongoing criminal investigation actually involves violating someone’s privacy and impersonating her online in order to gain access to people they may be interested in investigating is unclear. It should be interesting to see what the judge rules in the case.