Manchester police wants to add you as a friend

Apart from the street corner, where, asked Greater Manchester Police, can we reach the idle youth? The answer, apparently, is Facebook. Manchester's force has become the first in the UK to launch a Facebook application, an online programme that users can add to their personal page on the social networking site. Other popular applications let users play Scrabble or highlight the countries they've visited on a world map. But Manchester's application - it's called 'GMP Updates' - could, according to some privacy advocates, do a little more than its users have bargained for.

On the face of it, GMP Updates is a Crimewatch-style news feed, an up-to-the-minute bulletin board of unsolved crimes ('Man injured after gunshot fired, Rochdale'). There's also a 'Submit Intelligence' button, so users can anonymously upload information, tips, even photographs.

The problem is that, when dealing with

Facebook, nothing whatsoever is ever anonymous. The social network has a history of privacy controversies - in 2007 it was roundly criticised for sharing personal information with other websites - and a significant ongoing unease is that every Facebook application demands complete access to a user's entire profile and list of their friends. The applications run on servers belonging to the third parties that have developed them. So only what is effectively a gentleman's agreement between them and Facebook stops developers collecting and/or misusing personal information. The Manchester force could fairly simply access a huge quantity of profile information (religious, political affiliations) and details of who knows who.

Seemingly taken aback by the level of suspicion, Manchester Police have issued an official denial that GMP Updates is being used to scan user profiles. Their motives are probably squeaky clean. What is clear, though, is that Facebook needs a complete privacy overhaul before it can give its 70 million users a forum for anything other than the trivial.