UK police first to use Facebook

by Rich Bowden - Apr 21 2008, 22:10

In a sign of the times, a U.K. police force has launched an application on Facebook to help glean information from the public concerning criminal cases.

Called GMP Updates, the application provides users with crime news, appeals and missing-persons stories. The application also links to an external website where information can be submitted anonymously and YouTube videos viewed of ongoing investigations.

"Greater Manchester Police is proud to be the first force in the country to use this new technology, and it demonstrates our commitment to exploring all avenues available to us to help fight and detect crime," said assistant chief constable Rob Taylor in a police statement.

The police force will take advantage of the estimated seven million Facebook users in the United Kingdom and said within a day of the launch, some 750 people had downloaded the Updates.

However the online intelligence gathering initiative may invoke privacy concerns says Guilherme Roschke, a fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) to ZD Net UK.

"Law enforcement use of applications will significantly expand the reach of what law enforcement can see, and also provides a more surreptitious viewing ability," Roschke wrote and said Facebook Applications had access to political views, relationship interests, copies of photos in Facebook photo albums, a list of user IDs mapped to Facebook contacts, a social timeline, name, birthday, gender, current location and other information, reported the journal.

By default the application can view information about a person's contacts, said Roschke. "It's not enough to carefully tune your privacy vis-a-vis other Facebook users. You also have to avoid adding in applications like the GMP Updates."

A UK police force has launched a Facebook application. Photo: Greater Manchester Police

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