I don't think you understood, we weren't understaffed, that's besides the point as it's not hard to reply to an email. The main aspect is you should demand a warrant because you as someone that works for a private company shouldn't be the arbitrar of if a cop has enough or not (plus the cop will obviously not give you any details besides ongoing investigation in most cases). There's a job for that which is a judge. In my opinion even internal lawyers should not judge that outside of the legality of the request. In many jurisdictions you can get in trouble for doing that.
I've in FBs position and I'm happy to report that we had a very well oiled process to deal with pederasts and assisted LE in putting a couple of them - also in the US and Canada - behind bars. That's one of the reason I knew that officer that I mentioned above. These people need all the help they can get, their departments are overworked and understaffed. Investigations are often a bit more time sensitive than you seem to believe. But hey, it's just a couple of kids.
FB has armies of lawyers to stall each and every legitimate request for data and there is ample proof that they have done this many times over the years. This is just one of many cases where they - you - and their tech could have made a difference, but chose to withhold aid.
As for LE sharing proof to convince you that things are a bit time critical: I have never found that to be a problem, assuming you have the stomach for it. What you seem to miss is that warrants have to be more specific than is useful in many cases and FB is well aware of this. In this case the LEO went with that request because he knew that a warrant with that specific set of conditionals would be unlikely, even if it would have helped to solve the case that much quicker.
But given that they're a terrible company with an absolutely horrible person at the helm I should probably not be surprised. See, if the likes of FB would actually take a stand on this subject that would take the wind out of the sails of a lot of these efforts to really harm privacy. But they're happy to sell you down the river when it benefits them and to use the privacy argument when that benefits them too.
A few years ago I came across a company that was wholesale sharing the worst of the worst and the CEO of that company was making all kinds of silly arguments about how they were 'just a dumb pipe'. They refused to take any counter measures and it took me proving to them and their - future - investors beyond a shadow of doubt that they must be aware of what and how much is going on but willfully turning a blind eye. Privacy was - of course - their stated reason for upholding their values. Because it suited them commercially, not because they actually gave two bits about actual privacy.
FB is a massive conduit for child pornography. You know it. FB management knows it. They have their internal processes to deal with flagged content. But they could do a lot better and they don't simply because it is just a cost to them. So they do the minimum and hide behind the privacy cloak when it suits them, even if they know full well what is going on.
Mate I never worked at Facebook what are you on about. Sure if you're looking at evidence of a crime you don't need to wait for a warrant you can proactively reach out. That is not what I was talking about.
