Caught out on(line) Facebook

Do you use Facebook?
Twitter perhaps?

Well, interestingly lawyers, bosses, private investigators and police are now using these social networking sites to help them piece together information to help solve crimes, assist in criminal proceedings and provide warnings to employees.  Nowadays, information online in relation to employees and witnesses has become a very powerful, and often embarassing but usually useful tool. Take for example the following examples:

• only recently the incoming MI6 chief’s wife put personal details about the whereabouts of their 3 grown children as well Sir John Sawer’s parents and the location of their flat. Lady Sawer did not effectively restrict the privacy of her account (to “just friends”) thereby effectively allowing any of Facebook’s 200 million “London” users to see the entries. The details have obviously since been removed.
• a NZ couple’s bank accidentally transferred $NZ10 million (about $8 million) into their account and their on the run spending it in Hong Kong. The lady’s sister boasted about the warm weather and the tasty Chinese beer on her Facebook profile page.
• according to a criminal barrister, in the US [the accused] alleged that a policeman set him up and loaded him up with drugs. The defence team subpoenaed the police officer’s Facebook pages and got his entire history. The policeman apparently was cross-examined on that material and it was ultimately put to him that he had set this bloke up and the accused was acquitted.
• a friend of mine who is a manager in a blue chip company discovered that one of her employees was taking a bender day off and not sick as they had “claimed”, he had bragged about how much “fun” he was having on his Facebook profile the day he took a sicky…that was enough to get a stern warning.

Ultimately the above shows how powerful this type of information can be.

The law has always, it seems, is always trying to keep up-to-date with the rapid pace of technology. The future looks not bleak but online as courts have to grapple with privacy and defamation claims in the future as current generations publish more about themselves and their social peers online.

As some of you will already know, you can now set a user name for your facebook profile (eg.www.facebook.com/username). Just think carefully about the username you choose because once you’ve chosen it, you won’t be able to change or transfer it!