Drug Enforcement Administration agents can set up fake social media profiles in your name and publish risqué photos they take off your cell phone without your knowledge, according to a Justice Department court filing investigated by BuzzFeed.
Sondra Arquiett, formerly known as Sondra Prince, was convicted of involvement in distributing cocaine. But since she was a low-level member of the drug trafficking ring, who ran errands as a favor to friends in the group, she cooperated with the DEA investigation and ended up only receiving probation.
But before Arquiett ever went to trial, the DEA had set up a fake Facebook account in her name, and posted photographs of her in her underwear, along with photos of her son and niece. They used this fake profile to communicate with a criminal fugitive.
Arquiett would only find out about the fake profile when a friend asked why she had posted those pictures online. She then sued the agent who created the profile.
The government claims that Arquiett “implicitly consented by granting access to the information stored in her cell phone and by consenting to the use of that information to aid in an ongoing criminal investigations [sic].”
But BuzzFeed interviewed several privacy experts who were deeply troubled by the case:
Read more reaction and the full investigation here.
