This is really about law enforcement being too lazy to do their own jobs properly. Here's a story:
I run a dating website and was contacted by law enforcement to provide contact information for a user suspected of soliciting sex from a minor. The information was forwarded to police on behalf of the parent of the minor. As per our privacy policy, we informed the police that we will need a court authorized subpoena before handing over details about one of our users. They also informed me NOT to ban the user or otherwise disrupt his account in any way until they receive the evidence they need from me.
Weeks passed, then months, and finally I had our attorney reach out and contacted them again to ask what happened with the case, and it turns out the subpoena was blocked on some kind of administrative issue. They didn't bother telling us so that we could ban the suspect from the site sooner. In addition, they could have easily gotten the information they were looking for by using the dating site to act as a minor and get the information themselves directly from the suspect (they had the username). Our attorney told us that never once did the investigator log onto the site themselves.
This is one small story, but just goes to show you the extent of the laziness that pervades law enforcement today.
Perhaps lazy, perhaps working 20 other cases, or just lacking technical sophistication. If it was me it would be much simpler to issue a subpoena then engage in some sort of sting operation where things could go wrong.
I run a dating website and was contacted by law enforcement to provide contact information for a user suspected of soliciting sex from a minor. The information was forwarded to police on behalf of the parent of the minor. As per our privacy policy, we informed the police that we will need a court authorized subpoena before handing over details about one of our users. They also informed me NOT to ban the user or otherwise disrupt his account in any way until they receive the evidence they need from me.
Weeks passed, then months, and finally I had our attorney reach out and contacted them again to ask what happened with the case, and it turns out the subpoena was blocked on some kind of administrative issue. They didn't bother telling us so that we could ban the suspect from the site sooner. In addition, they could have easily gotten the information they were looking for by using the dating site to act as a minor and get the information themselves directly from the suspect (they had the username). Our attorney told us that never once did the investigator log onto the site themselves.
This is one small story, but just goes to show you the extent of the laziness that pervades law enforcement today.