Digital Undercurrents

Part of the hype for the current “Internet Kill Switch” legislation has been evocative images of the Hoover Dam. Clearly, nobody wants the floodgates of the Hoover Dam to open due to an Internet security breach – it’s a great image, because it’s like something out of a Bond movie. So the backers of the bill have been painting that picture and hoping that the visceral dread it evokes will help carry the bill through Congress.

Only one problem – the Hoover Dam, according to the people who actually manage it, isn’t connected to the Internet.

Next thing you know, villains won’t have eyepatches and cats. What a world.

For a long time, public posts on the Internet have been admissible as evidence. But more and more often, private or restricted posts are being subpoenaed from sites like Facebook and MySpace for use in court.

From the article:

In the United States, postings on social networks are generally governed by the federal Stored Communications Act, which regulates how private information can be disseminated in non-criminal matters. The law has been interpreted to mean that the sites don’t have to hand over users’ personal data in response to a civil subpoena. Defense lawyers, though, have devised a strategy to work around this roadblock: They ask judges to order plaintiffs to sign consent forms granting defendants access to their private material. The defendants then attach these consent forms when they subpoena the sites. In these subpoenas, the plaintiffs are essentially authorising the sites to hand over printouts of the private portions of their pages to the defendants.

Long story short – if you’re going to claim a debilitating injury, you probably shouldn’t post photos of your rock-climbing trip a week later on Facebook. Even if they’re “private”, they’re not.