Tweeting and the law
Back when Facebook and Twitter were harmless procrastination destinations, we were all significantly less concerned about keeping certain parts of our profiles private. We checked our pages once a day at most, didn’t think twice about that questionable picture a friend posted, and belonged to a dozen “help! i lost my phone and all my contacts!” groups (*cough* PhoneHalo). Needless to say, things have changed dramatically since those naive social networking days.
Prime example: TechCrunch Europe has been collecting stories they call “Minority Reports”, where law enforcement cites the suspect’s Twitter and Facebook pages as evidence. In the most recent case, a man was found guilty of conspiracy for tweeting that he planned to blow up an airport in the UK. I guess even on social networking websites, ‘anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law’.
But don’t dispair! If you want to “joke” about something potentially incriminating, just type #twitterjoketrial at the end of your post. It’s the new trend, everyone’s doing it.
-Gabrielle