Court Demands Private Facebook Data

Defeat Globalism writes in with a Canadian court decision that has ordered a man suing over injuries from a car accident to answer questions about content on his private "friends only" Facebook page. "Lawyers for Janice Roman, the defendant in the lawsuit, believe information posted on John Leduc's private Facebook site — normally accessible only to his approved 'friends' — may be relevant to his claim an accident in Lindsay in 2004 lessened his enjoyment of life. As a result of the ruling by Justice David Brown of Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, Leduc must now submit to cross-examination by Roman's lawyers about what his Facebook page contains. Brown's Feb. 20 ruling also makes clear that lawyers must now explain to their clients 'in appropriate cases' that postings on Facebook or other networking sites — such as MySpace, LinkedIn and even blogs — may be relevant to allegations in a lawsuit, said Tariq Remtulla, a Toronto lawyer who has been following the issue."

Comments

With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Like harrassment, it really isn't up to the perpetrator to determine just how victimized a victim feels.

It is unclear to everyone but the victim just how much loss of enjoyment of life he sustained. Using something as innocuous and meaningless as tweets on Facebook to determine someone's state of mind is like trying to determine the intelligence of someone from their postings on Slashdot.

Re:With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[acvh]

with all due respect to a fellow slashdot poster, if you are asking a court to give you money for "loss of enjoyment of life" then your life is now fair game for examination. relying solely on the plaintiffs statements would not make for a just proceeding.

Re:With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[rtb61]

The reality is though that facebook is not about your or anybody else's life, it is a fabricated digital facade, a impression you wish to create of yourself to be viewed by others be they strangers or friends. The lawyers fishing expedition was not even about catching real fish, it was all about trying to catch phantom illusory fish and then hoping to present that illusion as real.

So a real warning to people who naively surrender their privacy, about how that information can be misused and twisted out of shape to present in what ever light people can use to their advantage. So face book, myspace et al, a really bad idea unless you simply want to put up a completely non personal digital illusion of yourself and present yourself in the best possible light. New online business prospect, the creation and maintenance of PR=B$ on line profiles, you too can now be like the rich and greedy pseudo celebrities, where publicists create an illusion to hide the venal self serving worthless reality.

Do you also know that you can also use that illusory personal profile in court cases to your advantage, as long as it is suitable and carefully prepared over an extended period.

Re:With all due respect to our Canadian neighbors

[icebike]

Well said. But bear in mind:

If the loss of enjoyment of life refers to what we all suspect it refers to, and the "vic" brags about banging every hot bod in town to his private friends it goes directly to credibility, and possible perjury.

The private pages are not necessarily the same as the public facade pages. The public pages amount to public statements.

The private pages amount to a private discussion in the lobby of a hotel with friends.

If they differer the vic has a problem.

Far too many people jump into the meat market of web 2.0 thinking it will make the cool, relevant, and part of the in crowd.

Re:*BSD is Dying

[countvlad]

2000 called, they want their troll back.

I'm not overly concerned

[LKettle]

From what I understood from this article, and a surprisingly poorly written one for a newspaper imo, is simply that their private facebook postings maybe relevant to a civil court case, and they'll have to provide them to the other side.

I don't see any problems here. In reading groklaw over the years I was surprised at the level of disclosure IBM and SCO had to provide eachother, whole servers of data were exchanged.

The moral of the story and a good example in the article: If you're on disability and post pics of yourself skiing on your facebook, even only visible to 'friends', don't be surprised if it comes back to bite you in the ass.

Ya well

[Sycraft-fu]

If you post it online, you should assume anyone can see it. None of these minor protections like "friends only" are any sort of serious impediment. Online is where things go to be seen by the world. So, if you aren't comfortable with it getting out, don't post it. That's not to say you can't make use of privacy settings, just don't count on them to keep everyone out.

If something is private, keep it off websites and other such things. If something is really private, keep in encrypted and/or stored in a secure location (like a good safe). If something is really, really private, don't have a record of it at all, keep it just in your head.

Discovery

[Kirijini]

Duh!

Its called discovery.

I don't know about canadian laws, but in the US, any documents relevant to a lawsuit can be sought a party to the suit, even from non-parties from facebook, and this can be backed up by a court with a subpoena.

Its all in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

F.R.C.P. 26(b)(1): "Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense"

F.R.C.P. 34(1)(a): "A party may serve on any other party a request within the scope of Rule 26(b) ... to produce ... any designated documents or electronically stored information"

F.R.C.P. 45 covers subpeonas.

Basically, the rules are: if its relevant to the suit, and not privileged (like spousal privilege or 5th amendment self incrimination rights), it can be sought by a party. Even private letters to friends. That this information was published to friends on an online service probably means that any privilege the material had was waived.

If you have evidence, you may be compelled to produce it. This shouldn't shock anybody - our justice system won't work without it. Whether or not it's "private" doesn't matter except as provided in the rules or protected by law as "privileged" material.

Finally - its right there in the facebook privacy policy: "We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws."

Re:Discovery

[Shihar]

I really don't see why this is news worthy myself. So a court ordered someone to hand over private documents... this happens all the time. The fact that it is stuff posted on the quasi private Facebook doesn't really change much. If the government demanded that Facebook hand over its entire database to search for terrorist, I would be concerned. The fact that someone who is being sued is getting their Facebook page opened up as apart of normal evidence gathering is unremarkable.

People... if you are breaking a law, don't post it on Facebook and assume that the magic of the internet will keep it from the authorities.

Facebook?

[InsertWittyNameHere]

We all know they should evaluate his porn downloads, not Facebook, to get an accurate assessment of the impact to his enjoyment of life.