Facebook Denies Responsibility for Morocco’s Lousy Sense of Humor
If Fouad Mourtada spends the next three years in prison for creating a fake profile of a Moroccan prince on Facebook, it won’t have been the social-networking site that put him there. Facebook insists it didn’t help the Moroccan government identify the 26-year-old engineer as the author of crown prince Moulay Rachid’s fake Facebook page. Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in a statement that the company shares information with law enforcement and other government agencies only “when it has a good-faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.” But with regard to the bogus profile that led to Mourtada’s arrest, “Facebook has shared no such information with the Moroccan authorities,” she said.
So if not Facebook, then who? Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders suspects Mourtada’s ISP, Maroc Telecom. “Did the police get his computer’s IP address? And if so, how? We have asked the ISP, Maroc Telecom, in which the French company Vivendi is a shareholder, to provide us with the relevant information.”
Comments
OK. If it is not Facebook, then HOW did they traced back to him?
“Did the police get his computer’s IP address?” — How would they? That’s non sense.
Police would first have to identify WHAT IP ADDRESS is involved, Police can not find out about that IP address without first looking for it. And, once found, THEN they could trace it back to the subscriber using it.
How would they first find the IP address?
One solution would have been to monitor ALL Morocco traffic to Facebook until some one signed up as P_r_i_n_c_e M_o_u_l_a_y R_a_c_h_i_d.
But that would be MASSIVE wire tapping!
Another, even more invasive method, would be to have been RECORDING all traffic, all the time, and then simply searched the records… Requires quite a lot of storage capacity depending on retention period, but still feasible.
Either Facebook provided the info or else ALL Internet traffic in Morocco is easily readable by the authorities.
Or did I missed something?
Posted by Jean Hugues Robert at March 9th, 2008 at 4:55 pm