Slashdot Mirror
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.
He can't make them give up the passwords, but he can hold them in contempt of court and have them jailed if they refuse to do so.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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
I think that it's more likely that the judge would simply not give that party (who didn't surrender their password) what they were seeking in the divorce. IANAL, but it seems rather harsh to throw someone in jail for refusing to surrender evidence in a civil case. Seems more likely that they would just lose the case...
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
And the law generally provides they can order any silly thing.
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 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.
Buy Text Processing in Python
you can post a status "spouse has the fb-pw by now". Too hard to do?!
IANAL, but the short answer is basically judges can order whatever they want in theory, although in practice there are significant limitations (more on that below). Another big point to mention is that the United States uses a common law system, meaning that large parts of the law have never been defined by a statute (i.e. a law passed by a legislature). The major limitations:
1. The judicial selection process almost always picks people who are not going to go off the deep end and start issuing crazy orders, but generally stick close to what is authorized by statutory, regulatory, or case law.
2. Orders from lower courts can be appealed and overturned by appellate courts.
3. There are mechanisms in place to impeach judges.
Within the law, there are various factors that limit orders judge are supposed to issue, and I suspect a relevant one here is jurisdiction. Divorce is a matter for state courts, and if the divorce is occurring in a state where Facebook doesn't have enough of a presence to bring it under the judge's jurisdiction, ordering the parties to swap passwords may be a lot simpler (from a legal perspective) compared to whatever they would have to do to bring another action in Federal court or in a state court with jurisdiction over Facebook to compel Facebook to turn over the data. I'm not sure why the court didn't just ask Facebook to turn over the relevant data. Of course it's also possible they did and Facebook refused, or the court knows that Facebook has refused similar requests (as distinguished from orders) in the past.
Most things on Facebook are already public, or did it become that secure that a move like this is necessary?
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.
Not really no. Facebook can, and should (correctly) argue that this violation of their terms of service causes their business serious harm, and places a cost burden on them, which they are not obliged to bear without representation in this case.
Facebook, knowing these passwords are compromised can and should lock down both accounts. If the court wishes access to the contents of said accounts it can take it up with Facebook (which they have to comply with), but damaging Facebooks reputation and service for litigation with doesn't actually involve Facebook directly, and without their counsel is very very very bad precedent. Admittedly, I'm not an american, your system might be even more stupid than I'm aware of, but I doubt it. Your system makes a big deal of protecting corporations (whatever one may think of that).
The court could overwrite any agreement between the two parties involved, but it can't just overwrite an agreement with a 3rd party for the fun of it. From Facebooks perspective the Judge is encouraging unauthorized access to their network, and there might be some laws about that.
Again, they can request or even demand Facebook turn over the relevant content, they can demand both parties turn over relevant content, but you cannot simply overwrite a contract with a 3rd party without their representative in the room.
Now the actual issue at hand might be that facebook isn't actually doing anything about this. That's a different problem - because at some point they are implicitly authorizing the activity (even that mentioned in the article of judges logging into facebook pages) by not contesting it.
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
Think again
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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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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?
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!
Facebook is obligated not to destroy evidence that a court is likely to express interest in. So once there is an order Facebook must preserve the evidence. They can request the right to limit damage by closing the accounts and giving information to the clerk. But the judge is not going to care about them getting a new cost, that was their choice to interfere.
The judges implicit order to them was not to close the accounts. Once they become aware of it, they have some limited obligations to obey. If it becomes explicit i.e. if the order were worded in such a way that closing the accounts would be an explicit violation, then Facebook can't do anything other than appeal. They were denied so they are going to be given wide latitude. But complying with court orders is not going to be considered harming their business by US courts.
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.
Facebook is obligated not to destroy evidence that a court is likely to express interest in. So once there is an order Facebook must preserve the evidence.
Yes, if FB has been put on legal notice, which in this case, it has not. So FB does not have an obligation to preserve 'likely interesting' evidence.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
You are wrong. spoliation of evidence is the intentional or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding.
Courts aren't interested in playing games where:
A has evidence
A gives the evidence to B
A gets a subpoena
B destroys the evidence
then B gets the subpoena and is unable to comply.
or variations. The court doesn't have to tell you not to destroy evidence. If you want to destroy evidence which is likely needed for a legal proceeding you need to go to them. And that's likely, you don't have to be sure it is needed.
There was no warrant issued. A judge said that two persons had to exchange passwords so the other can fish for possible evidence.
The order did not include FB nor was FB given legal notice of impending action. A warrant or judge's order still needs to be specific to the parties involved so I'm having difficulty agreeing with your conclusion, though I do agree with your points regarding destruction of evidence or spoilation.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
Correct Facebook hasn't been notified. Which means that if Facebook were to take actions for reasons unconnected with the court, for example if they decided to delete all accounts in Illinois and that's where the couple lived, they would be fine. Spoilation is black letter law. You can't murder people, you can't steal cars and you can't destroy evidence that a court lilely wants. You don't to get a special order, it is a standing law pertaining to all cases going on in the United States from any court at all times.
Just to pick a similar example. If I knew of a criminal trial, that I was a first party too, and decide to intimidate a juror to try and get a verdict that would be a crime regardless of the fact that the court never ordered me now to engage in intimidation.
Again, I agree with you except that it sounds like you're saying that FB would be held legally liable for following it's own TOS without being given legal notice. I'm saying that the parties involved were ordered to give over their passwords. According to the TOS they both agreed to, doing this would potentially get them kicked off of FB. The judge gave no orders or anything directly to FB, so FB never received legal notice, therefore booting the couple because of TOS violations would not be considered spoilation.
That's how I see it, anyway. This is why the judge should have followed regular discovery procedures in the first place. The judge would have gotten the information and had the parties present it just like they would have with all the other evidence requested AND as a bonus, there never would have even been a hint of a TOS violation.
My analogy is that it's the same thing as if the judge ordered the parties to exchange debit card PINs and had them go to a local ATM and print out the account information. Sure, I guess it could be done that way, but why bother when there is already a perfectly acceptable method of getting the information in the first place?
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
That's crazy. If that was me, I would say that I had given the money to my wife and that SHE was hiding it. At least then the bitch would go to jail too.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
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.
No what I'm saying is that a casual notification is legal notice. Once they have good reason to suspect, i.e. like someone telling them then they have notice. There is no formal requirement.
He didn't ask FB to do anything. On the other hand FB is forbidden from interfering the same you or I are.
I understand that's how you see it. You just are dead wrong. Sorry.
Judges don't follow discovery.
In which case the bank, if they knew about it would be prohibited in closing the ATM card, even thought the bank's TOS might very well mandate an account closure in the case a pin is known.
BTW just to clarify this, there is no TOS violation. The judge overrides the TOS.
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!
BTW just to clarify this, there is no TOS violation. The judge overrides the TOS.
Thank you for being polite and patient.
One further question then which I still can't quite comprehend: how can a judge interfere with a third-party contract? Or is a contract significantly (i.e., legally) different from a TOS agreement?
It just seems that it would possibly create an undue hardship on the 'innocent'/uninvolved third party.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
'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.
So if I were to say that I routinely always destroy certain confidential records that are my own property after I've read them *SPECIFICALLY* to prevent the eventuality that their contents might ever be used to incriminate me, and I go to court and they order me to turn over such records, again, bearing in mind here that preventing self-incrimination is the *SOLE* reason for doing this, am I going to be liable for willful destruction of evidence?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
A blog I run for the wealth
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.
A contract is an agreement between two parties. I was being a little flippant to make the point. I'll be a bit more anal in this response. The judge can't alter the contract, what he can do is alter the enforceability of the contract and the legal status of the contract.
Lets say for example A makes a contract to give 3 grams of marijuana to B in exchange for $75. That's a contract. Because it is an inherently illegal contract any acts taken in furtherance of this contract are criminal acts. And since both parties have a higher obligation to the law than to the contract either party could violate the contract without fear of judgement. So for example if A were to give the marijuana to B and B refused to pay, and A took him to court for the debt. B could argue that purchasing marijuana was a crime, by itself and the court would most likely render a judgement against A getting to collect the $75. In a sense the anti drug statute nullifies A and B's contract. And that is policy of the US courts, "the suppression of illegal contracts is far more likely in general to be accomplished, by leaving the parties without remedy against each other." (Atwood v. Fisk).
Essentially the court reserves the right to alter A and B's contract because it is illegal. Moreover the existence of the contract does not protect A or B in any way regarding their criminal act. When we talk about nullifying a contract we generally mean making it unenforcible legally. The contract still exists in some vague sense but it becomes without any legal weight. And this can happen for any contract even those without illegal acts. For example if I promise to my daughter to take her to an amusement park on Saturday and she agrees to go. The court cannot enforce that promise nor can it penalize her if she changes her mind and no longer wants to go, nor can it compel me to take her. All contracts get their legal power from the courts, outside enforceability contracts don't mean much.
Facebook is obligated to assist and certainly not interfere with evidence collection for all trials in all courts in the USA. That obligation instantly nullifies the TOS whenever it occurs. Once Facebook is aware of the trial they are in exactly the same situation as A and B above. They are obligated to maintain the account. If they believe the obligation interferes with the TOS then the TOS is now part of an illegal contract. Hence essentially either:
a) There is no violation of the TOS
b) The provisions involving the TOS are illegal with respect to that couple and hence altered by the greater obligation. So neither party is violating the TOS, because they don't exist anymore.
If Facebook felt itself injured by not being able to close the accounts they could petition the court to be allowed to close the accounts. But most likely they would have to provide services to the court to collect the information in other ways. The court does not want to create a hardship for Facebook. Or alternately they could approach the couple and try and come to an altered TOS agreement. What they can't do is close the accounts.
Yep. The court would look at that defense the same way they would look at X's claim, "I make it a policy to always deliver drugs when asked. This specific drug delivery I got caught for did not involve an individual act it was part of the more general policy of delivering drugs". Even if you destroyed evidence for perfectly legitimately reasons once you became aware that the evidence was likely to be needed in a trial you are obligated not to follow your policy of destruction of records. If you didn't, the same way they got Al Capone for tax evasion they could get you for spoliation and not the underlying crime.
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.
Sites like slashdot? You're welcome to try to connect Locke2005 to my real-life persona. You will fail, although there is exactly 1 other slashdot user who knows who I actually am... good luck finding him!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"Once you become aware".... you see, that's the tricky bit.
My point is that *ANY* record of something might potentially be called on as evidence for the activity in the future by a possible court case whose purposes you might not even necessarily imagine, and an intelligent person is always going to be aware of this. So let's say a person openly admits to a policy of always destroying confidential data once they have finished with it. They do this for sake of securing their own privacy, so that the records are not seen or utilized by other arbitrary people, not specifically to prevent their use in a court of law. But then if this person should ever do anything that isn't actually illegal, but might be ethically questionable, and then destroys evidence of their participation in it, they instantly are breaking the law at that point because they must be aware that it could be called upon in some hypothetically upcoming court case against them?
I trust you can see the absurdity behind this.... and what it invariably means for privacy and anonymity online.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The law is likely not potentially. You are free to destroy records that could be potentially be called as long as you determine they are unlikely to be called. If you destroy a record and can prove that the record was unlikely to be needed you are fine.
Just to clarify as a matter, if you have a policy of always destroying confidential data for that to be legal you need to have checks which avoid it being applied for documents likely to be called. This comes up all the time with corporate email retention systems. For example a company might have a policy that employees are told to save important emails to sharepoint, because all emails are deleted after a year.
Not really. The alternative would be to eliminate the civil system of discovery. For the criminal system, it is useful for going after low level employees that frequently are a key part of racketeering. I only wish this law were enforced more on banks and brokerages.
As far as online anonymity... I'm not sure the state has any compelling objective to preserving a legal shield for online anonymity. You could make a case for that, but in the USA setting up an LLC is pretty easy. The account could be property of the LLC and that creates some shield. I'm not sure what you would want the state to do beyond that.
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.
And of note this is a divorce. At one point in time
the couple was a legal entity. Almost any legal agreement
would have been binding on both parties. His/her $150,000.00
credit card debt and the $900,000.00 second mortgage on the
home... would have been "their" debt even if unknown to the
other. But what are they "looking for" on the social media site.
Cause for the divorce... trip to Mexico expenses... illegal activity...
legal activity... Checked in at Starbucks at the same time
as 50 other people....??? what are they looking for?
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org