Originally posted 2008-11-16 00:56:05. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
That’s summary judgment, or worse, against you or your client. Last February we reported on a decision in which a federal magistrate judge ruled, unsurprisingly, that there is no “social networking privilege.” Now Walter Olson reports and links on further developments and thoughts as follows:
Nowhere to hide: When your litigation opponent subpoenas your Facebook, Amazon, MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn and (locked) Twitter pages.
Of course the current “pages” (or current feeds, etc.), other than a locked Twitter page, should not need to be subpoenaed — they’re up there for the downloading, mainly. Subpoenas don’t only cost money, they tip off the other side. But a lawyer might want to subpoena both locked social networking site data, such as postings and other information revealed only to select persons (e.g., in closed Facebook groups or to privileged “friends”), in which case we can expect a more intensive query: Did the user have, or not have, a reasonable expectation of privacy there, as opposed to what is publicly available?
Kidding!!
More interesting could be data submitted to such websites but not at all intended for publication. The hunt to shake down that tempting fruit could well be the somewhat easier version of subpoenaing your way through IP addresses with your friendly neighborhood ISP, considering that, like all websites, social network sites disclose that they will comply with any legal process requiring them to cough up information they would otherwise keep confidential. Indeed, if the target for those seeking the identity of Internet identities in over the last ten years has gone from self-published websites to blogs, the move to social networking sites could give them another bite at the apple at breaking the judicial lip-lock on Internet anonymity. Is there any reason to posit a distinction here based on the “thinner” cover and, perhaps, the more articulated “social” obligations of users under the terms of use of rich sites such as Amazon and Facebook?
Hmm.
Hat tip to the notionally un-networked, yet ubiquitous, JT!