The police have found a way to access individuals’ social media accounts even though they have no jurisdiction over them, Cyber Crime Unit head, Inspector Timothy Zammit, told Times of Malta. He  said the police had joined an international network of law enforcement agencies which helped them gain access to online information in urgent cases.

“If we need to get information from a social media provider, we now ask foreign law enforcement agencies to request it for us. The service provider is often obliged to hand it over to them,” he said. Although not an official network, Mr Zammit said the investigative cooperation was yielding results.

Asked what kind of information the police were accessing, Mr Zammit held his cards close to his chest, saying only that companies such as Facebook would not release information such as messages sent using the chat function but would hand over activity logs of individual accounts.

Facebook’s Global Government Requests Report, published earlier this month, showed Malta police filed 170 requests for user information last year. The Maltese were 82 per cent more likely to have their information accessed when compared to the Americans, the second most likely to be spied on.

Mr Zammit said there was a common misconception among social media users that they were immune to local law when accessing foreign websites.

“If you break a law in Malta, it doesn’t matter whether you do it on a foreign website or not, you would have still broken Maltese law and could face criminal repercussions,” he said.

More in the e-paper on timesofmalta.com Premium