Russian Law Enforcement Agency Gets into Trouble over Violation of Social Network ToS

The tech blogosphere tends to be very happy when we see new signs of how various governmental authorities go social and adopt various social tools like Twitter or Facebook. Of course it is obvious that we want every single government regulator to be on Twitter and for citizens to be able to get some services they need by posting an @reply or a direct message - instead of visiting some office and standing in some line.

But the problem with our enthusiastic reports is that in the vast majority of situations the authorities (or their employees) have no idea about proper behavior online, netiquette or any guidelines they should follow not to do anything that will hurt instead of helping them provide better service. And some of the examples of their online activities are definitely more than simply clumsy.

The latest example was widely covered on Russian TV recently and the entire situation is pretty much hilarious. The story is about the Russian Bailiff Service. They have never had too much free time on their hands given that so many ex-husbands were trying to avoid paying alimony to their children. At the recession the situation got even worse with the growing number of debts for mortgages and various consumer loans so the agency now has even more work than ever.

So it is no wonder that they are looking for some new ways to collect the debts - and implement creativity in the process. One of the employees of the local service in one of the Russian towns has recently come up with an interesting idea: he suggested that the service should use one of the most popular social networks in Russia to track debtors down and make them pay.

This plan might sound just fine but up to one point: they have decided to use a photo of an attractive young girl for her to initiate friendships with the debtors when they had profiles on the social network and invite them to meet personally. Unfortunately the debtor was met by the bailiffs at the imaginary date instead of the girl they expected to meet.

And while this may sound like a pretty clever plan (and the bailiffs claim it helped them recover some debts that were very difficult to work on otherwise), the process actually involved two huge errors - and both of them will now bring the service to court as a defendant themselves.

The first and the worst problem is that the bailiffs decided that they could easily take a photo of any attractive girl right on the social network - and use the photo to build a profile they were supposed to use to persuade the debtors into imaginary relations. And they randomly selected a girl from Moscow without asking for her permission or anything - having somehow decided that the fact that she uploaded her photo online made the photo absolutely free to use for anyone without any permission.

Another error is that they did not even bother to consult the ToS of the social network Odnoklassniki.ru that served as a platform for their debt recovery campaign: unfortunately the document clearly specifies that it is not permitted to use a photo of another person without permission at all.

But the most hilarious part of the story is that the employees of the agency have actually decided that their idea deserved attention from everyone in the country so they invited TV reporters and told their story to demonstrate how wisely internet can be used by the authorities. Unfortunately for them, the girl whose photo they used (as well as her friends, family, and customers) happened to watch TV news as well - so she was very surprised to find out her photo was used in such a manner without her granting any permission at all.

Now she is planning to sue the bailiff service of the town in question and request compensation from them - and at least expects some kind of apologies from the service. Time will tell if she wins: judging by the fact that her position is supported by law chances are high she will though the problem is it must be problematic to win in court against a court-related service. But anyway the lesson is pretty clear here: internet is quite a tricky field and if you are venturing something new, at least don’t forget to consult your lawyers not to get into troubles.

Via (in Russian)