Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. personally duked it out with Facebook’s lawyers in the state’s highest court Tuesday — with the social media giant warning that the privacy of all 8 million New Yorkers is at stake if it is forced to comply with warrants from law enforcement.
Vance wants to be able to perform bulk seizures of Facebook users’ private accounts as part of criminal investigations. The social network is fighting to block the move, calling it outrageous government overreach.
It was only the second time that Vance had personally delivered oral arguments before the Court of Appeals in his six-year tenure, underscoring the magnitude of the issue.
His predecessor, Robert Morgenthau, spoke before the court just once during his 34 years in office.
The case is being closely watched by both law enforcement and the tech industry to see whether the very definition of search and seizure may have to change for the digital age.
The case at hand centers on a 2014 filing by Facebook which contested Vance’s bulk-search warrant demanding information on 381 of its users.
The targeted private accounts were linked to suspects in a major investigation into NYPD and FDNY Social Security scammers.
More than 100 people have already been convicted in the ruse. They claimed they were too sick to work in order to get the benefits — then posted photos of themselves on social media platforms like Facebook jet-skiing and sport-fishing.
“These were individuals who were faking lifestyles. They were claiming they couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t go bowling, couldn’t see their families,” Vance argued before the Albany judicial panel.
He said the fraudsters’ social-media accounts “give us an indication as to whether they were in fact disabled.”
The search warrants for social media posts, he added, are “really no different than if we issued a search warrant into someone’s house and took books and records or a car or a safe deposit box.”
But Judge Jenny Rivera highlighted the concern expressed by Facebook — that the bulk warrant was an overly broad intrusion into citizens’ personal lives.
Judge Rivera cited “the magnitude and the significant intimate details that become available with a keystroke.”
Vance countered that “law enforcement is always going to be bumping up against people’s privacy, that is the nature of what we do in gathering evidence.”
Facebook lawyer Thomas Dupree Jr. retorted that “the DA’s ultimate position in this case is chilling. Under his view he could seize the entire digital lives of everyone in New York City.”
Dupree added that the “voluminous number” of warrants, for 381 accounts, was “a major red flag.”
“No one has ever seen anything like it,” he said.
Two lower courts had signed off on Vance’s warrant and a gag order that barred Facebook from telling its users about the probe.
Vance said the gag order was necessary to prevent the possibility that the suspects would have deleted the information.
He added that he has no plans to make public a sealed affidavit that details why he targeted the 381 Facebook users.
The six-judge panel will rule on the case in the coming weeks.
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