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Judge Makes Divorcing Couple Swap Facebook Passwords
PolygamousRanchKid writes with news of a recent court order during divorce proceedings: both parties must give their social networking passwords to the other, so that each side can snoop for evidence. From the article:
"Everyone knows that evidence from social networking sites comes in handy for lawsuits and divorces. Attorneys usually get that material by visiting someone’s page or asking that they turn over evidence from their page, not by signing into their accounts. But judges are sometimes forcing litigants to hand over the passwords to their Facebook accounts. Should they be? What was the reason behind the court-authorized hacking in the Gallion case? ... While all may be ‘fair’ in love and war (and personal injuries), password exchanges like this are not kosher according to Facebook’s terms of service. I wonder if Judge Shluger is aware that his order violates Facebook’s TOS, which require that users not hand over their passwords to anyone else. Shluger did, at least, try to limit the privacy invasiveness of his order by telling the parties not to prank each other. 'Neither party shall visit the website of the other’s social network and post messages purporting to be the other,' he included in the order."
Go on, take the Facebook password, but if anyone touches my Linked In password, there will be trouble,
Evil people are out to get you.
What was the reason behind the court-authorized hacking in the Gallion case?
So I can "hack" my buddy's game account by asking him for the account/password? Wow, this social engineering is getting pretty ingenious. I bet the judge humps corpses in those eff pee ess games too.
I wonder if Judge Shluger is aware that his order violates Facebook’s TOS
Why the hell would he care?
In my opinion anytime someone enters into contested divorces they should be assigned a guardian by the court with full power of attorney and the ability to have the person they represent temporarily institutionalized until the divorce is finalized. People who get divorced and have any sort of adversarial proceedings typically turn into raving lunatics who are dangers to society.
The cheater must be sentenced for being stupid, not for being unfaithful.
How can someone use his/her facebook/email account for cheat instead of creating a fake one?
I think a court order trumps FB's TOS, so I doubt he cares.
And would we want it any other way, such as a corporate TOS overriding a court? I think not.
Is such a court order enforceable?
The key question to me is what makes everybody so eager to give so many details of their private lives to a FOR PROFIT company whose entire business model is built around selling that data?
Oh, wait, I forgot... without Facebook, the internet provides *no other way* to communicate with your friends and family. Facebook is the internet's sole communication mechanism. That must be it.
Why not also require them to make copies of their house keys for each other so they and their lawyers can go into each other's houses any time they want and rummage through each other's files, look for evidence of affairs in their bedrooms, look for property not reported in the divorce proceedings, look for signs of alcohol or drugs or depression or other personal factors that might have some bearing on the case?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
If couples went to such lengths to listen to each other while they're still together, divorces just might become a rarity again.
I would write a letter to facebook stating the following:
I intent to share my password with another person for my own advantage. Since i intentionally violate the TOS i would kindly ask you to delete my account or prohibit access.
Then i would wait try to delay swapping of the passwords until that is processed.
Does it seem strange to anyone else that while in a criminal trial you can't be compelled to testify against yourself, in a civil trial you can be?
That doesn't mean Facebook is obligated to keep the accounts active... Unless of course the judge issues a warrant/subpoena.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
[insert spouse's name]isabitch
Facebook password will just allow them to impersonate each other and plant all kinds of incriminating shit.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I think the difference is... I'm not sure the judge can order fb to keep accounts open --- FB could be ordered to provide information... But fb still should be allowed to close/lock accounts that are violating their business practice...
if it were a fault of the business sure... But FB in this instance is a third party in the dispute. Force the information out from the company... But do not order the company to continue to serve those 2 customers if they choose not to
I wonder if Judge Shluger is aware that his order violates Facebook’s TOS
Facebook's TOS stops applying where the Judge's order starts. Facebook's rules are always overridden by laws. This isn't difficult. Company rules have to follow the law, even when the law is changed right underneath them for something like this.
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I realize people are becoming increasingly ignorant due to choices in recent decades to limit or eliminate Civics from most educational curriculum in the United States. To fill you all in, a Court Order trumps any terms or contracts set out by any private parties. The judge need not have any concern about violating Facebook's TOS.
A clear case Idiocracy becoming reality.
I guess it shows that a site's ToS is irrelevant in the eyes of the law
I can actually see a reasonable discovery purpose in looking at the contents of FB pages, and that is mentioned in the article. For example, if the parties have made comments about how responsible they might be in a custodial role (something suggested in article), that could be germane.
But FB isn't really a walled garden anymore. Now there is a quite good "export my data" functionality within it. A reasonable judge's order would simply be for exchange of that downloaded data, which will contain all the relevant background that might exist with past posts. Obviously, this is contingent on parties not deleting old posts first, but other posters have already noted how doing that would be spoilation of evidence (and if parties would do that, they could equally do so with a live account after passwords were shared).
I do recognize that the article mentioned "dating sites" too. Those sites may still be walled gardens, and may well not provide easy data export capabilities. For those, the only way to look at relevant posts/emails/profiles/etc. might indeed be password sharing. Of course, who knows what general data policies those sites have--i.e. are messages automatically deleted after N days, and archives inaccessible to users? Access to password may or may not reveal the full history of site usage.
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The stupid part is not the judge, but people who use Facebook for things that might be of interest in legal or civil proceedings. Are people really this dumb?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Most things on Facebook are already public, or did it become that secure that a move like this is necessary?
Is there any mechanism to challenge an order like this, or is the judge's word final? Are there any limits on what you can be compelled to do by a judge?
Find someone you hate and hand them half your cash... and just shorten the process.
Apparently, now you also have to hand over your passwords
No... your honor... she can keep the Myspace account.
If you ever were looking for a better time to use it, you won't find one.
'Are there any limits on what you can be compelled to do by a judge?'
Count how many bully boys and thugs a judge has at his disposal, then compare that number to how many you have.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Someone I know had a child custody case (state law) in which the judge ordered that father gets to claim the son on his taxes even though he only gets his son during the summer and holidays (father lives out of state). Because son lives with mom greater than 6 months of the year, according to the IRS (federal law) website, mom gets to claim the son, and if father claims the son, that is illegal. This was pointed out to the judge, who did not care.
What if they hand over their passwords without changing them first? Chances are they use that same password for just about everything, and could then give their spouse access to other things like email or other IM accounts.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
And all you have to do to finalize the deletion of the account is to not log into it for 14 days! So all your spouse has to do to prevent your attempt at destruction of evidence is take your password and log in with it!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No.
Facebook can act according to their policy until the court tells them otherwise OR the become obviously aware of the need to do something different.
Where facebook would get in trouble is if they did not follow their own internal established policy for data retention.
If facebook is not aware of the court case (and lets safely assume they aren't), and the guy deletes his account, and facebook really DOES delete it in 2 weeks, then Facebook is not in the wrong, the guy deleting his account is.
If facebook knew about this court case, and then purged the guy's data the data AFTER he clicked delete rather than at the standard 2 week time, then Facebook would be in trouble..
If facebook was aware that the account was going to part of a court case it gets a little muddy, and really depends on Facebook's own internal policies on how it goes. As long as they are consistent with their policy, and the policies are objective not subjective, they'll probably be fine. If the policy is subjective, it gets risky, which is why they have policies like 'deletes in 2 weeks' and automated systems to do it so its consistent.
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Suppose one person defamed a second person by falsely claiming that the second person kicked the neighbor's dog. This judge would order the first to kick the neighbor's dog as a fix. The fact that the dog should have an expectation of fair and decent treatment would apparently make no difference to this judge. Facebook should go to court and howl.
I wonder if this judge reasoned that this order is like requiring people to make bank accounts open to one another. I certainly hope not as that would make this judge an idiot. Facebook should lock both accounts and await the judge's response so they can inform the judge the he is not the CEO of the company and has no right to dictate or subvert their policies. A financial institution could certainly tell some divorce court judge to go fish if that judge tried to subvert proper methods of transfer of financial instruments.
Really, what evidence are they searching for?
Evidence they called each other nasty names? How is anything on facebook even relevant to a divorce case?
Judge or no, I would never, no matter what happened, hand over my passwords.
What if the guy was using the same password on many different accounts, like say for his more sensitive bank information or billing information. While I hope most of us agree that's bad security practice, it's still cooperating with identity theft.
There is a law buried in our legal system, stating you do not have to ever under any circumstances hand over your passwords, encryption keys, or secret phrases. It was brought to my attention by a lawyer sitting in the lobby of border crossing between the US and Canada when they were asking me for my passwords for my laptop. Wasn't due to anything nefarious if your curious, it would have simply been a breach of an NDA I had signed on source code I was working on at the time. But the lawyer explained, NDA or not, you must willingly hand over your passwords, even if the president himself was asking you.
I wonder if either one uses the same password on other non facebook accounts. If so it could get interesting...
'Neither party shall visit the website of the otherâ(TM)s social network and post messages purporting to be the other[.]
Seems pretty easy to get around:
"Hi everyone, this is Dave's wife. I just wanted to let you all know that he cries during sex and he likes playing the catcher for my stap-on. Have a great day!"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
So now we're defending arbitrary, silly, and unenforceable TOS and EULAs! Glad to get that cleared up!
Troops! ABOUT-FACE! March!
Yes Sir!
That's pretty ridiculous for any case whatsoever. Why do I feel like this whole thing isn't really accurate. Wouldn't a judge be more likely to make them each turn their passwords over to the court? Allowing the lawyers to perform discovery? But turning the passwords over to the respective people themselves, why would the judge do that?
After all, lawyers, despite what it may seem, do as far as I know (I'm not one), have rules they have to follow to continue practicing law. Breaking those rules could greatly impact their chances at winning their side's case. Or even continuing to work as a lawyer at all. On the other hand, the couple doesn't have any such issue really since they obviously already hate each other.
That's one of the stupidest judgements I've ever heard.
The best defense against this kind of crap is...NOT to use facebook.
Second best...don' post anything the slightest bit incriminating.
Third best...Don't commit even the smallest criminal act, and oh yeah, don't cheat on your spouse.
Now for the REAL best defence......Never get married! Remamber, marriage is not a word, its a sentence...a life sentence...WORSE than going to prison...in Mexico!
The world has become a kind and gentle place. Used to be the best advice was to sever your penis. Have you ever thought of signing up for Root Strikers? You're a natural. No, wait, I have it backwards: your advice is a gilded path to office in Washington.
Outside of this post, there sure seems to be a lot of people on this thread suffering from reality shock.
Facebook has a feature to download all data from the account. Why not just make each party do that and hand the data over to each other?
If the law was fair (no-fault divorce) then none of this would be a problem.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They deserve one another, and we deserve to be free of them both. Let them destroy each other - I'll bring the beer.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
'Neither party shall visit the website of the other’s social network and post messages purporting to be the other,'
So they cant send people facebook messages as eachother, but for better or for worse, nowadays facebook is your defacto online presence for most of the internet.
Recent activity -
"_Ex husband_ liked horsefuckers.net [thumbsup.gif]"
"_Ex husband_ liked midgettrannyhookers.com [thumbsup.gif]"
Or less malicious, but possibly more professionally damaging...
"_Ex husband_ liked NORML.org [thumbsup.gif]"
You get the idea. This sort of thing should be handled carefully by a third party. In a bitter divorce, if one party doesnt mind going to jail for contempt of court, you could pretty much ruin someones personal and professional reputation with access to their facebook account. I mean, there have been cases of people coaching their children that the other parent had molested them in attempt to effect divorce proceedings as well as ruin the other party, this sort of thing has the potential to be at least as damaging.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The judge ordered the counsel to exchange login information. The counsel -- not the couple -- was who had access and that access was limited to gathering any evidence on the accounts that could portray either party as an unfit parent (such as images or messages documenting substance abuse). The access being given was not unrestricted or without purpose.
The motivating factor behind this judge's order was a child. Something convinced the judge that important evidence relating to what was in the child's best interest could exist on these accounts. An order like this wouldn't be issued in a typical divorce that didn't involve children because most states have no fault divorce. Family courts in those states don't care about any romantic trysts, juicy drama, or even substance abuse that your spouse might have dished about on Facebook. The child is what made the order relevant and necessary in this case, which is why it was issued.
That being said, using social networking sites to gather this kind of information in custody cases is fairly common place in California and most of the time we don't even need a court order. The types of people who post pictures of themselves getting high or drunk at parties on Facebook or MySpace typically do so for the attention, so their accounts and galleries tend to be public. If you can't find anything there, then you can usually find something on the account of whoever leaves the most comments on their profile/wall.
Once, I found a picture of the wife in a divorce cradling her newborn daughter in one arm while she held a joint in the other, along with a Ziploc bag full of weed. The picture was on the MySpace account of one of her friends who had attended a party at her house. The friend documented the events of that day by writing a blog entry about how drunk and high everyone had gotten (including the mother, who had passed out). These sites can be a valuable tool to gather information on an individual, even if the information is not being gathered from their account.
Being Slashdot I suppose is why I can't see mention of the possibility that only one half of the couple has a Facebook account. That's an interesting scenario.
Deletion is probably effective but I expect the data is retained (ordered by gov.... cia, whoever pays or coerces enough) for bigger court cases.
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I dont use Facebook, but would think that this would have the potential to negatively impact their business.
If Alice and Bob are forced to give each other their passwords, I cannot trust messages that come from Alice as they may really be coming from Bob using Alice's account.
I would think that one of the things that brings value to Facebook, is that when you receive a message from a friend, or see a post on their page, you can be pretty sure it was them who had posted/sent it. If that trust is undermined, then Facebook suffers, as I would have no use for the service.
IANAL, but here's how a real lawyer explained it to me at a previous company:
While once you know something is likely to be used in a legal action you can't destroy it; it is perfectly fine to routine destroy material that you don't want to have to share. If you routinely delete all messages once every 30 days, for example, on an ongoing basis, then you aren't try to destroy evidence since it hasn't yet become an issue in a legal proceeding. Once you reasonably would know it may become evidence, you can't destroy it; and must stop any routine destruction activity.
We routinely, as soon as the final report came out, destroyed all our working papers and the floppies that contained them. Sensitive topics were not discussed via email. In our case, it was a written policy.
There are of course, exceptions to that - if you were engaging in criminal activities the courts may take a different view of your actions.
Moral issues aside, one only compounds the stupidity of using Facebook for illicit activities and keeping the messages instead of deleting them right away.
Facebook could, of course, be ordered to turnover the deleted messages; but I would think they would fight such an order since it would potentially open them to becoming a virtual repository of evidence that they would have to retain forever at great cost to store and retrieve.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I happen to be a license health care professional. Over the past few years there have been several articles in my professions magazines (physical) and newsletters from companies such as malpractice insurers (have you guessed where this is going!) on the issue of social media sites.
The general recommendation is: anything you say the internet can and will be used against you in a court of law. This includes malpractice cases and cases where your license may be at risk. They often cite cases where someone lost their license or lost a malpractice case, and some of the evidence was from a social network account, or postings they made on some interest site like....slashdot.
They also point out that many of these sites allow other people to say things about you you can't control...etc. etc. and how this can negatively impact your reputation. The final recommendation is to think long and hard about joining one of those sites. Or a flat recommendation to simply not say anything on the internet.
Meanwhile, society at large has moved quickly to make using Facebook and site like it more and more the norm.
I can image getting involved in a legal case....
Judge: "...and you shall turn over any social network account info..."
Me: "...I don't belong to any social networks."
Judge: "I don't believe you. I am ordering you in jail for contempt until you comply."
anonymous coward? Or just being careful?
Any married person that uses their main Facebook account to communicate with their extramarital lover deserves anything they get. Sure, having multiple Facebook accounts is against the TOS too. But so is signing up when your under the age of 13... my daughter has a Facebook account to communicate with all her friends (all underage) that also have Facebook accounts. If you're going to fool around, get a throw-away prepaid cell phone, and use the mobile number to verify a throw-away Gmail account and Facebook account. And for Pete's sake, keep all of these hidden from your spouse! (Yes, I had an ex-girlfriend grab my cellphone while I was sleeping and start calling the numbers I'd called to harass them because of her paranoid delusions that I was cheating on her.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So reset the password to:
"She/he is a royal twit and so is the judge"
This is interesting because there are no limits
to the activity that someone might do on the account.
While the judge admonished the parties to not hack
the account how is this admonishment going to
be audited.
With this type of ruling services will increasingly need
read/ write/ change/ logs. In addition they will need
account dump procedures and in some cases alternate
read only access processes. These social network sites
also need to establish fee schedules. To compel a company
to do something for free is punitive.
More interestingly in a divorce action there are other bystanders
i.e. Friends or Circles of friends that have made visible personal
info and remarks to one party but not the world. So he/ she can
now stalk her/ his friends and even friends of friends.
So N.B. that this is not a two or three party ruling. The reach
of this judges activity extends to perhaps hundreds perhaps millions of
of people that a common search warrant would fail judicial review and
justification for. Of interest to some are political "friends"... He is a friend
of "Bush" and she a friend of "Planned Parenthood" and the Catholic
Church.
What if all friends and friends of friends enjoined this ruling from taking
effect.... i.e. their non public words would now be visible where they would not
have been. Carol said on Jane's wall "Bob is a dink but hung like a goat".
i.e. this ruling between Bob and Jane now exposes Carol's words.... Was Carol
named as a party and was she named as a witness in this proceeding? Was Carol's account
pass word shared with "the girls"?
There be dragons here...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I'm not sure about the details of the american legal system, but over here in Germany, there's this thing called the "pyramid of rights". Basically, some things are simply superseded by higher-ranking laws. For example, the constitution sets the limits on other laws, you can never interpret a law in a way that would violate the constitution. Likewise, you can never interpret (or legally agree upon) a contract that violates the law.
If the US is the same, then if you are ordered by a judge to do something the TOS forbids, you are not actually breaking the TOS, because the court order has superseded the TOS in this part.
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I don't know why someone would risk deleting the info anyways. I work for a place WAY smaller than Facebook and we have the ability to restore data going back nearly a month. Then you still get in more trouble and the info comes out anyways. I'm no legal by any means but wouldn't a "Plead the 5th" be a better option here since he's ordering someone to hand over something that could/would be incriminating?
WTF this is so dumb stupid judge!!
his ruling would cause people to violate facebook TOS and it is a violation of privacy and if you are in a no fault state then there is no reason for this.
so delete your facebook accounts and dating website accounts before getting a divorce !! wow whats america coming to.. this is lame.
its a sad thing to see our rights being violated and nothing on facebook should be made available for a divorce case.
if they dont wanna be together let them divorce. you dont need to sift through peoples dirty laundry to get the job done.