Facebook wants assurances from the Drug Enforcement Administration that it’s not operating any more fake profile pages in investigations, the Associated Press reports. Facebook’s chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, told DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart that law enforcement agencies need to follow the same rules about being truthful on Facebook as civilian users. Those rules include a ban on lying about who you are.
The letter responded a New York woman’s federal lawsuit contending that a DEA agent created a fake online persona using her name and photographs stored on her cellphone. “Facebook has long made clear that law enforcement authorities are subject to these policies,” Sullivan wrote. “We regard DEA’s conduct to be a knowing and serious breach of Facebook’s terms and policies.” The Justice Department said that fake profile pages “is not a widespread practice among our federal law enforcement agencies.”