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[Entwood]

The number of times I carry printouts of facebook accounts to the Jury panel during a trial is amazing ... if I had a pound or every occasion.................

People post the stupidest things, and don't realise that if it can be viewed it can be printed, and there are many ways of accessing accounts in order to view .....  Idiots they are, and idiots they will remain.

Entwood, just curious as I am not on facebook etc. But what is the legal stand on accesing these peoples accounts ? I am not trying to be awkward or funny or anything, but it just seems to me that if there accounts have been hacke or tampered or whatever I don't know. Then is that not an infringement in itself.

It would seem to me in this age of "rights" that these people are not claiming that their rights have been infringed.

Like I said just interested.

AFAIK .. and I'm a simple Usher not a Barrister ... the pages I present to Juries, as evidence, seem to come under 3 headings ....

Stuff that is available on "public" pages .. no-one needs any authority to enter, read or act on those pages ... and knowing how to search properly seems to find a great deal of stuff !!

Stuff that is posted on peoples pages (walls ??), and those people are willing to give evidence, they give the CPS permission to read THEIR pages, and CPS "see" everything that OTHERS have posted there !! ( also works exactly the same way for the Defence of course... but far less often !!)

Stuff that is provided under a Warrant - this is actually quite rare - the police can ask for a warrant to view pages .. but it is very narrow and directed, takes a lot of getting, and mostly gets thrown out under the rules of evidence, however it does sometimes get admitted. Cases that come to mind are "grooming" (although the witness evidence is usually pretty compelling) and "drug dealing" (mobile phone records are now used far more than social networks records)

Certainly anything that was obtained by "hacking" would be instantly dismissed, Rules of Evidence are extremely strict !!!

As I say .. I'm not an expert, and not legally trained .. just  a few years as an Usher in Court, and seen the Law in action a fair bit !!! 

[Vamps]

The number of times I carry printouts of facebook accounts to the Jury panel during a trial is amazing ... if I had a pound or every occasion.................

People post the stupidest things, and don't realise that if it can be viewed it can be printed, and there are many ways of accessing accounts in order to view .....  Idiots they are, and idiots they will remain.

Entwood, just curious as I am not on facebook etc. But what is the legal stand on accesing these peoples accounts ? I am not trying to be awkward or funny or anything, but it just seems to me that if there accounts have been hacke or tampered or whatever I don't know. Then is that not an infringement in itself.

It would seem to me in this age of "rights" that these people are not claiming that their rights have been infringed.

Like I said just interested.

User defined settings. A user can set it so everybody can read what they have posted, or just their "friends". So the info is just there, no hacking involved.

And in the case I was viewing it was open to all, that in itself says a lot.....

[2woody]

remember, all ISPs must automatically open all of their traffic to the Police - its a matter of law.

account-holders are not made aware of this

[Entwood]

remember, all ISPs must automatically open all of their traffic to the Police - its a matter of law.

account-holders are not made aware of this

Not strictly true

There is a Code of Data Retention, and there is Proscribed Access to that data .. but it is NOT "automatically open all of their traffic to the Police" .. it is very strictly controlled and is all laid out very accurately under the  The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA)

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents

and requires the authority of  a "designated person" before any data can be released. I accept that in some cases the "designated person" can be a senior police officer, but the case still has to be justified and approved.

[GastronomicKleptomaniac]

We have a "social networking policy" - following the dismissal of more than a handful of employees based on them posting "XXX is a so-and-so"* or "I hate working for YYY".

I find Facebook to be interminably dull and counter-intuitive, so it doesn't affect me. And I'm not daft enough to name my employer on an open forum, regardless of username...

*yes, I work with some right potty-mouths...