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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."
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?
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?
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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?
[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...
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It's also the cited by the UN as the preferred resolution of diplomatic process when there are accusations of noob faggotry between two peoples.
It not only feels good, it's the law.
And by violating TOS - the accounts shall be killed and erased. Problem solved.
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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.
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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.
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Think again
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
From what I've seen of divorce proceedings, there's a pretty good chance your soon-to-be-ex-spouse will do this, anyway.
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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I wonder if either one uses the same password on other non facebook accounts. If so it could get interesting...
So now we're defending arbitrary, silly, and unenforceable TOS and EULAs! Glad to get that cleared up!
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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.
Not either poster, but it seems like when you use LinkedIn or similar services, you are creating implicit pressure for other job seekers to to subject themselves to private companies largely intent on exploitation. So when you use LinkedIn, you harm the rest of the job force. Thankfully the harm is slight thus far, but one can imagine a future where it becomes impossible to get certain kinds of jobs without subjugation to a corporation you vehemently oppose.
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!
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.
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