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Facebook Private Info Increasingly Used In Court
Orome1 writes "Making the content of your Facebook account private can thwart the social network's plan to share as much information as possible with advertisers, but may not keep out lawyers looking for material that will contradict your statements in a court of law. US lawyers have been trying to gain permission to access the private parts of social network accounts for a while now, but it seems that only lately they have begun to be successful in their attempts. And this turn of events is another perfectly good reason to think twice about what you post online."
A few weeks ago, after finding out that some big economic and political heavyweights invested in Facebook, I decided to cancel my account. Two weeks after I filed the request, I finally no longer have it. It seems to me that Facebook itself rose to prominence after MySpace became overpopulated and polluted with spam. It was a good social network for educational sources, but now -- it has become conglomerate of something that it does not even deserve to be. Facebook has become too mainstream, its login service is used by many websites and the private lives and information of people is willingly compromised. So, would anyone recommend a small but dedicated social network alternative that I could try and recommend to my friends. It must have a strong privacy emphasis, anti-spam features and simplicity.
The crap people say about themselves online is ridiculous.
People without sense to moderate themselves will no doubt end up paying for it one way or the other. Talk about your hard partying lifestyle all the time and get a divorce, or charged with drunk driving, or dismissed from a job... good luck keeping that to yourself at that point
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
Facebook has always honored valid subpoenas, and lawyers have always been able to get them for this kind of info.
It's more that only now have lawyers started to catch up to the idea that it's a good source of info.
Look at the history of presentations at lawyer conferences, and you will see in the past year or so talks on what info you can gain from social network accounts, and e-discovery type stuff have started happening more and more.
So basically, it was just because lawyers are generally close to grandparents when it comes to the technology knowledge curve
I don't think this is surprising. I would have figured a court order would make Facebook give up your data to the court.
SSC
Subpoenas for all sorts of physical records and correspondence are par for the course. How is this any different than a subpoena for your diary or letters?
...in his Facebook profile, my client clearly states that his shlong is 20 inch long and always ready for action. This would make it impossible to be the person seen, and I quote: "running away from the heist carrying the stolen device". His anatomy would not allow rapid locomotion as witnessed, your Honour.
When one is involved in a court case, there is discovery where each party is allowed to investigate and examine the other party, including the other party's private documents such as diaries, for evidence. The court can issue a subpoena for said private documents. Facebook and other social networking sites fall under "private documents".
I have no idea why everyone is surprised at this. It has been like this literally for centuries.
Yes, but it's Groundhog Day.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Yes, but it's Groundhog Day.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that anything you put on facebook is factual or true. Its not like your facebook page is a legal declaration of the truth. You could I assume argue that whatever they find or claim was just made up. As long as you don’t claim to not know someone in your friend list that you added yourself. I don’t think you can tell who added who anyway.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Posting unencrypted data on 3rd party corporate services exposes them to legal requirements! We never saw that coming!
Dude, where's my packet?
That doesn't prove you haven't lied. It just means Facebook has a reason to ban you.
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But now a days there are so many companies providing host space, offline storage and backup, on line collaboration tools, even project planning tools on line. Many small businesses are using google cloud or microsoft office live cloud services. Now if some such small company is sued, and the lawyers ask for all documents saved in Microsoft Office Live servers with a proper subpoena would MS refuse? Would MS try to limit the discovery process to relevant documents? Would they do everything in the best interest of the defendant or in the best interest of the hosting company alone?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My mom is a family law attorney and uses facebook to consistently tear down
the defenses of liars on the witness stand.
Yes there is. Society cannot function with too many stupid people. They need to be oppressed and suppressed. That's how we get awesome laws like Obama Care, we're too stupid to do it ourselves, we need to be forced into doing what is smart. /sarcasm
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Don't get a facebook account. I don't have one and never intend to.
First, these are civil cases, not criminal. There is no prosecutor and there is no guilty/not guilty.
Second, it is the DEFENSE that is using FB as evidence that the plaintiff is lying.
So, let's say I sue you for $10M because I fell on your property, and I claim I am stuck in bed 24x7 and can't enjoy life at all. Are you really going to say that you wouldn't use pictures I posted on Facebook of me dancing at a party as evidence that my life is not as bad as I am claiming?
The things that courts will be interested in are not necessarily the the profile information or the friend list as a whole. They will be more interested in your activity. Whose wall do you post on frequently? Who have you been chatting with, and what about? If you use any location based services with a tie in to facebook, they can tell where you were or weren't at a given time. While you may be able to create some misleading information by having fake conversations and have other people use your account from your house while you're out robbing a bank, this would show a much higher level of sophistication. In fact, I would guess that any criminal sophisticated enough to go through the trouble of staging their facebook account would be sophisticated enough to not use facebook at all for fear that their profile could be used against them in court. I recently watched "The Facebook Obsession" on CNBC and they talked about how police departments are increasingly using Facebook to locate and bring in suspects. It has proven to be very effective, and that is without the need for a subpoena. This is all information that is publicly available. Again, any fugitive worth their salt would cut off all communication, change behavior patterns, and get out of Dodge; thus, negating any benefit to checking their facebook profile.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I would still demand eyewitness testimony.
Which wouldn't be too hard to get since your friends would also be in that photo, or mentioned in that post. And how hard would it be to find your friends since you plastered them all over facebook?
The rules of evidence are much less restrictive in civil court than in criminal court.
Chances are if you were caught in a lie like this you would not be demanding eyewitness testimony, because you would have to purger yourself to deny the photo was real, or to even claim it was photoshopped.
Adding lie upon lie in court is seldom a winning strategy.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This website, "Facebook.com", is sometimes datamined by lawyers for information to hold against people in legal situations. This can be legal. It is sometimes facilitated by Facebook or through wiretapping/bugging of computers and/or phones.
I would like to make a declaration of fact to the effect that any and or all information contained in my Facebook Profile could be inaccurate, either on purpose or by accident or omission.
I sometimes exaggerate times, I have been known to make up events that I then pretended to attend and I deny being at events that I did in reality attend. Reasons for this are many and varied and my own business.
I may or may not use my real name, date of birth, family details or my real physical address.
This Facebook Profile is not a journal, diary, log nor record of my life and should not be taken to be accurate or true for any reason.
If anyone were to attempt to use information from this, my Facebook Profile, in a Court of Law I could in all good conscience hold my hand up on penalty of Perjury and deny actions that may appear to be truth if evidence for them was garnered in full or in part from this Facebook Profile.
This does not preclude the possibility that some events and statements are true.
This statement may or may not carry legal weight, and to the best of my knowledge has never been used as a defence in Court, but it stands as truth and if necessary I will swear under oath that I stand by the spirit of it.
I'm seriously considering putting this as a note on my profile.
Might get me out of a sticky situation if I ever get faced with this crap.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
Seriously. If this is all it takes to send someone to jail, a few people I know should change their passwords soon. Else I'll have them jailed if I so please.
Now, I'm (usually) a law abiding person, so the chances of me using this are fairly low. But if this becomes the fast pass for a verdict, it becomes trivial for criminals to frame others for their crimes. You need your mark's passwords (more trivial to get than one should assume, at least with the average person out there) and some skill in Photoshop. Hell, some creative writing suffices it seems.
Malware writers usually get a ton of passwords during their operations. Mostly, they are currently phishing for ebay, paypal and similar pages. If this becomes the standard procedure, we have another venue for them. Need someone arrested? Search no longer, we'll make sure the courts work for YOU.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.