This article is from the archive of our partner .
This is not the kind of Facebook privacy story you're familiar with, but it may be a sign of things to come. After a busy week in Facebook news--making war with Google over privacy violations, making up with Google over opposing privacy legislation--a strange story is bubbling up in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that police hauled in one of their own journalists after he published a story about privacy vulnerabilities on Facebook. Ben Grubb, the paper's 20 year-old deputy technology editor, didn't even see it coming.
Yesterday, Grubb reported on a demonstration given at a tech conference in which a security expert demonstrated how one could break into any Facebook account and steal photos regardless of friend status. The story, published in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, included one of the stolen photos. Police took Grubb into custody later that day, acting on a complaint from the Facebook user whose account was compromised, and released him a few hours later without charges. They did, however, confiscate Grubb's iPad in order to conduct an investigation into the incident that could carry federal charges. According to a statement from the Queensland police, "The investigation is looking at a hacking incident and the subsequent use of the property that was then acquired as a result of that hacking."