Facebook

Saturday's Telegraph had a story about a man suspected of murder who refused to divulge his Facebook password to the police, who thought that his Facebook stuff might contain information relevant to their murder investigation.

The man has been jailed for his failure to help the police with their inquiries, but our legal trail stops there. And the Facebook Corporation decline to help.

It seems that our way forward is to apply to the US courts, who may or may not be helpful.

So it seems to me that if Facebook want to operate in this country, they should be liable to the laws of this country. That if our law allows a court, after due process, to direct them to open up, then they should open up. I can't imagine that the Russians or the Chinese would tolerate this kind of thing. And while we are at it, we should arrange to charge corporation tax on that part of their profits which arises from clicks in this country.

Given a bit of political muscle, the technology is there to do this sort of thing.

PS: I have no idea whether the man in question has continued access to his Facebook account or whether he or his agents are able to obliterate any evidence there might be there. Maybe the Corporation keeps all the necessary logs anyway.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/04/making-statement.html. My own account was deleted some months ago now.