Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: FACEBOOK IS MY ALIBI

by Hazed

A suspect in an armed robbery case has an unusual alibi: Facebook.

19-year-old Rodney Bradford from New York posted one of those boring updates about his tedious life. No, it didn't say he was robbing a bank; that might have been interesting. It said, "Where's my pancakes." Yawn. The point is, he posted it from a computer in his dad's Harlem home on the morning of 17 October, and that is the time he was accused of taking part in a robbery at gunpoint of two men in Brooklyn, which was where he usually lived.

The day after the heist, he was pulled in by police for questioning, and that's when he came up with his alibi, that he was using a computer miles away from the crime scene.

The police checked Facebook and presumably also checked with ISPs to confirm that his status was indeed updated from his father's place at the time the robbery took place, so all charges against him were dropped. Presumably it helped that his father and stepmother confirmed he had been in the house at the time.

Now, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, as I did when I read this story, that it's not a cast iron alibi because all it proves is that somebody was posting on the guy's Facebook account at that time from that place - it doesn't prove it was Rodney himself. The New York Times reports that this was taken into account. His defense lawyer said, "This implies a level of criminal genius that you would not expect from a young boy like this. He is not Dr. Evil." The paper also confirmed that the Facebook alibi was merely the "icing on the cake" because of the two witnesses to his whereabouts.

But it does open up possibilities for future criminals who are planning ahead to arrange for somebody to post something on their behalf while they are committing a crime elsewhere. Until such time as all computers are fitted with cameras which snap pictures of the user whenever anything is posted, how can you tell who is using the keyboard?

For that matter, it wouldn't be beyond the ability of a tech-savvy crook to come up with some automated script that would log onto Facebook and post a message at a pre-set time!

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