Facebook cannot block 400 search warrants rules US court

Facebook cannot block nearly 400 search warrants seeking users' postings for a criminal fraud investigation, an appeals court said yesterday, but the judges said they understood the social networking site's unease about the prosecutors' extensive request.

The Manhattan Supreme Court Appellate Division ruling would not put new information in prosecutors' hands. The social networking site had lost earlier rulings and had turned the data over, though the case had been closely watched by social media companies, civil liberty activists and prosecutors.

According to Facebook, it was weighing its options for pressing ahead with the fight.

"We continue to believe that overly broad search warrants - granting the government the ability to keep hundreds of people's account information indefinitely - are unconstitutional and raise important concerns about the privacy of people's online information," Facebook, which is based in Menlo Park, California, said in a statement.

The Manhattan district attorney's office, however noted the unanimous decision from the Appellate Division's First Department about the warrants, which a lower-court judge had approved at the outset.

The 381 warrants proved to be useful in building up a massive disabilities benefits fraud case against police and fire department retirees, and 108 people had pleaded guilty.

"In many cases, evidence on their Facebook accounts directly contradicted the lies the defendants told to the Social Security Administration" about being too psychologically devastated to work, district attorney's office spokeswoman Joan Vollero said yesterday.

According to the unanimous decision of the Manhattan Court, the warrants, which applied to 381 users' photos, private messages and other account information, could only be challenged by individual defendants after prosecutors gathered evidence.

Facebook is being supported in the case by a group of large internet companies including Google Inc and Microsoft Corp, which argued that the case could set a troubling precedent giving prosecutors access to all kinds of digital information.

Internet companies are resisting US intelligence and law enforcement agencies' demands for customer data, following revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of wide-ranging online surveillance.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office served the warrants on Facebook in 2013, calling for  information on dozens of people later indicted for Social Security fraud, including police officers and firefighters who allegedly feigned illness in the wake of the 11 September, 2001 attacks.

Even as the world's biggest online social network turned the records over to prosecutors last year a state judge threw out its claim that the warrants violated users' Fourth Amendment rights, however, it also went ahead with an appeal.