Blogging and Facebook: Privacy Concerns v.3.0
To pile on the recurring topic of privacy concerns raised by blogging and social networking sites like Facebook.com, I offer a story from yesterday's Business Week Online, "Big Brother is Reading Your Blog." Here is an interesting excerpt:
It appears from comments in class and comments on this site that Mr. Kelly has a big job ahead of him, educating people on the issues of privacy (or lack thereof) on Facebook.
Although it's note directly related to the employment law angle, I thought some of you might also find the following excerpt of interest:
Corporate bloggers are also coping with increased vigilance by bosses. Getting fired for blog entries is so common now that it's come to be characterized by the term "dooced." Dooce.com, a blog kept by one of the dooced, has seen its traffic more than double over the past year, according to Web site ranker Alexa. One networker who asked not to be identified says she regularly peppers her entries with fiction so she can avoid being identified by her employer.
The less-rebellious users are simply stepping up use of privacy controls, long supplied by sites such as Facebook.com. While users had the ability to implement online features to block school administrators and staff from viewing entries for months, "people are starting to get them more aggressively recently," says Chris Kelly, Facebook.com's chief privacy officer. Kelly was hired for this newly created position last fall.
It appears from comments in class and comments on this site that Mr. Kelly has a big job ahead of him, educating people on the issues of privacy (or lack thereof) on Facebook.
Although it's note directly related to the employment law angle, I thought some of you might also find the following excerpt of interest:
Usage patterns are changing swiftly. A couple of examples of the newest users: A college professor in North Carolina has scanned Facebook.com profiles to determine which students to accept into his class. Penn State University campus police used The Facebook, which only grants entry to people with .edu addresses, to identify students who rushed the field during the October Penn State vs. Ohio State University game, during which two police officers were injured.
The participants had formed a special "I rushed the field" group, complete with names and pictures, says Tyrone Parham, assistant director of campus police. Parham and his team ended up issuing warnings to more than 50 people in that group. "They were surprised -- they thought it was a private Web site," he says. "But we just did a couple of clicks, and here was everybody's picture."
Fighting fire with fire, some students search sites for evidence of lurking undercover campus cops or resort to subterfuge. At George Washington University, political-communications senior Kyle Stoneman and his buddies baited campus police by billing an innocent get-together a "Death Party" on the Facebook.com posting. After the police came calling, the group had switched the name to a "Love Party," promising guests hugs and kisses for showing up, Stoneman says.
posted by Professor Prenkert at
9:55 AM
1 Comments:
a. das: You're correct that there's almost no barrier to joining such a group and belonging to such a group cannot be considered irrebutable evidence of a person's wrongdoing. (For instance, a prosecutor is never going to be able to win a conviction based on the fact that someone joined a Facebook group, especially if there is evidence to the contrary -- like that the accused wasn't at the event in question.) But, the simple fact is that the individual has the ability to join or not join any particular group. So, to the extent that a person joins a Facebook group (even if not "actually" a member of the group) and a potential friend, a romantic interest, an instructor, or an employer draws an adverse inference from the membership, that seems to me to be the breaks of voluntarily associated oneself with a potentially controversial group/topic in a publicly viewable forum.
Now, are there limits to what I'm suggesting? What if a potential employer logged on Facebook, found the applicant was a member of a group organized around some protected classification under Title VII or any equal employment opportunity law (e.g., Muslim Student Union, a particular Protestant church denomination, Black Law Students Association, etc.), and decided not to hire the applicant on that basis?
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