A current court case wending its way through NY has some
implications for all of us and how we use social media. How many people do you share your posts
with? On Twitter, the case is pretty strong
for law enforcement to have access to these during an investigation. Anyone can follow you without your permission
and then can retweet it to anyone they want.
So there is very little expectation of privacy.
On the other hand with Facebook, you have the option to
share only with your direct links. Furthermore,
you can set up your privacy settings so your friends can’t forward it/repost it
to others. But the current law suggests
that even this is not a sure thing. If you
have only five FB friends, and they are all real friends, you can probably be
sure that they will follow your wishes and you therefore have an expectation of
privacy. So law enforcement can’t get
access to it by subpoena to Facebook.
But if you have 500 FB connections, a reasonably aware
person should know that no matter what your settings are, things can get out.
Especially if they are juicy. So the
courts are leaning towards allowing law enforcement access to this information
if they have enough probable cause to get a subpoena.
My Take
So what this really may tell you is that when you get those
random friend requests from people you don’t really know, you may be better off
turning them down. Not just because they
will clutter your news feed with posts you don’t care about, but because it may
protect you from subpoena later on. And
please don’t say “but if you haven’t done anything wrong you have nothing to
worry about anyway.” There are plenty of
cases where someone was investigated based on very little evidence and had
their reputations ruined by the time their innocence was established. So it matters for all of us.
