Public Safety admits use of Facebook

Students may wish to think twice before posting pictures on facebook.com, as it now appears that Public Safety is using the popular social networking site to track potentially illicit activities.

The Daily Princetonian has learned of two incidents in which Public Safety appears to have consulted Facebook before approaching students about information posted on the site.

Public Safety Deputy Director Charles Davall, who denied that his department uses the site last month, admitted that one of these incidents was true but would not comment on the other. He said that Public Safety officers use Facebook to pursue information obtained in other ways.

"There are times when we use it to follow investigative leads," Davall said. "It is an effective tool for us, almost like going to Google. We'll use it to find a student's picture or cell phone number if we need to get in touch with them."

"But we are certainly not using it to scour for parties," he added. "We use it for following up an investigation we're working on, not to initiate one."

Davall said he knows that at least some Public Safety investigators have Facebook accounts, but since anyone with a "princeton.edu" extension on email can have one, he's not sure who in the department does.

This admission comes just a month after Davall told a 'Prince' reporter that Public Safety does not use the website to learn of parties or track students' activities.

"It's like Big Brother watching you and we really don't operate that way," Davall said in an article published Feb. 10. "We'd never consider it, either. Looking at students' private information ... [is] not the way we conduct business."

Accounts given by several students, however, make it seem that Public Safety does indeed conduct business by using the Facebook.

Clint Montague '09 said that he and several friends came under scrutiny from Public Safety after posting some incriminating pictures to a Facebook group called the Princeton Buildering Society.

"We had been climbing some buildings, took pictures of it and posted them on Facebook," Montague said. "Public Safety came to speak to Denali [Barron '09], the leader of the Facebook group. We thought that would be it. But they talked to each person in the group and told us one, not to do it again, and two, if we did, we would get in trouble."

Barron said the warnings provided direct evidence of Public Safety's use of the site. "I asked the Public Safety officer how he came across the pictures. He told me he has a Facebook account and someone reported them," she said.

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Barron noted, however, that the officer said he uses his Facebook account only to look up contact information if something is reported or someone is already under suspicion, not for unprovoked screenings.

"It seemed strange that they were coming after us, considering the other dangerous activities [shown on Facebook], but we didn't get in trouble," she said. "It was just a warning and there was really nothing behind the threats."

Davall said that Public Safety's use of Facebook in this case was "for safety, not discipline."

"It was a dangerous activity and a violation of Rights, Rules and Responsibilities, so we just handled it as a warning against engaging in that kind of behavior, and that's as far as it went," Davall said.

He explained that in the interview last month, he had not meant to deny the use of Facebook in all situations, only in preemptive searches.

Aaron Dawes '06 had a similar encounter with Public Safety.

"I was called in about a garbage violation, that there was too much garbage in our hallway," Dawes said. "I saw a Public Safety officer in their new building. I admitted to having a party in my room to explain the garbage, and he said he was glad because if not, he had proof."

This proof appears to have been provided by Facebook.

"He put a file in front of me with lots of information about me," Dawes said. "He flipped a page, and there was a full-page color printout of me standing on a chair or something like that, wearing fraternity letters. He said he could tell from the background that it was a party and that it was my room specifically."

Dawes said the picture must have come from a friend's Facebook profile.

This encounter led to another warning. "He said people should be careful what they post because [Public Safety] had access to it," Dawes said.

Davall said he did not recall this particular incident and therefore could not comment on it.

Whether these experiences have affected how students use Facebook is unclear. Though Barron said she's going to be more careful in the future, the Facebook group in question, Princeton Buildering Society, is at press time still up and running. The pictures of the climbing activities described by Montague are also online.

In the end, as Davall noted, it is up to students to police themselves. "We only get what people voluntarily put out there," he said.

— Who's reading your Facebook? (Feb. 10, 2006)