We have all heard about how social media networks are crossing a red line in terms of keeping the privacy of their members… well private.
The common accepted wisdom seems to be that if we are going to go online, use facebook, twitter, google plus, then it follows that we should accept to reveal more about ourselves then we had originally bargained. There are those that say this is a fair trade as they really don’t have anything to hide, whilst others, who don’t have anything to hide either are not so sure.
But it’s one thing to hand over your cell phone information, private address, names of spouse, children etc.. and quite another when it impacts your friends.
We have all seen posts of people we had never heard of before appear on our facebook wall. This is one of the network more “endearing” qualities as it puts people in the same room, even those we would never otherwise knowingly associate with.
How this is relevant to you I hear you ask? Well imagine that the Police sends a request to facebook for information on a particular account.
Do you know what is in this request, and what facebook sends the cops in response to a subpeona?
Here it is, a 71 page documents that show the actual subpoena (8 pages) and the remaining 62 pages being the response from Facebook.
Have a look. I might surprise you!
Above document embeded from a feature titled “Hunting the Craiglist Killer” from The Boston Phoenix
So did Facebook black out the names, or was that done by the people publishing the document online?
The names were blacked out by the folks who go a hold of that copy. Facebook didn’t black anything out when handing out this report to the authorities.
Stevie,
This question certainly raises privacy questions, doesn’t it. How much power do we grant the police and State’s Attorney’s office when a criminal investigation is underway? What’s public on the Internet is, of course, free game, but I think I have a problem with what’s private. If I had wanted it public I would have set it public. What’s private is like opening someone’s snail mail.
Very sticky question and I’m no legal expert.
Thanks for the food for thought.
RICK
Hi Stevie,
Thanks for very interesting information. How can we protect our facebook account?
Thank you Edyta for your question. I actually answered it in my latest article about Social Media Privacy