So, I had a friend. Had because he's dead. He did this work for a decade and a half and then couldn't deal with it anymore. In that time he put countless assholes behind bars. At some point he stopped responding to my emails so I called the unit and they were absolutely devastated, this guy was the backbone of their operation, the one with by far the most computer experience of all of them. RIP Ronald.

It is very hard to imagine what the life of someone on the frontline is like, the ones that are really battling online scum. So take that 'think of the children' thing and realize that there are people who really do think of the children and it is one of the hardest jobs on the planet.

Quote from TFA:

"The BBC asked Facebook why it couldn't use its facial recognition technology to assist the hunt for Lucy. It responded: "To protect user privacy, it's important that we follow the appropriate legal process, but we work to support law enforcement as much as we can."

So, privacy matters to FB when it is to protect the abusers of children. How low can you go...

The authorities simply needed to start an ad campaign with facebook targeting child abusers. Then FB would have that data packaged up and ready to sell in an instant.

That last bit is not really how it works. I've been in a small company that law enforcement would routinely reach out to for help with solving crimes because they thought we'd have relevant data.

99% of requests are wild goose chases based on nothing. Like literally dumb requests that are not only irrelevant, the request wouldn't even get past that cops boss, much less a judge. But a cop can just ask whatever they want regardless of merit or relevance and it's up to you to say yes or no.

In those years we received two requests with warrants that made more sense but when I see "company denied to help" I understand why. Most cases it's a random cop fishing for private info that has nothing to do with anything. And when it's true, just get a warrant then.

Otherwise you're more likely to be jeopardizing innocent people's data than actually helping anyone.