Social media is being used to help facilitate voting come November. Pennsylvania is particularly reaching out to let voters know about the new voter ID law through Facebook and Twitter. Read the press release from the Pennsylvania Department of State for the full story.
Here are two articles that look at who may be responsible for your Facebook posts. Katie Anderson’s article, “Fishing On Facebook May Put Employers ‘On the Hook'”, explores the legal ramifications of employers sifting through employees’ Facebook accounts. Hayes Hunt and Jillian R. Thornton’s article “Facebook and Twitter Subpoenas, Privacy and The Law”, takes another look at who controls the “private” information you post and tweet. Issues of control and privacy are continuing to evolve, and it’s increasingly important to keep abreast of how courts may be evolving in their responses.
A seemingly innocent post on Facebook blowing off a little steam which you may think is just being seen by your friends could land you in hot water. While context and privacy settings will ultimately be considered, you could find yourself in court before that happens if someone takes an idle post more seriously than you mean it. Robert Hilson looks at the issue in his article “Posting Idle Facebook Threats May Land Social Media Users in Law Enforcement Crosshairs.”
With more and more businesses and individuals turning to the cloud for data storage, it is more important than ever to insure that that data is secure. Peter Cochrane’s article, “Cloud Security: Why the Future’s Bright – But Not If You’re On the Dark Side”, offers some tips to increase your security.
A recent story in Time by Didi Tang with contributions from Gillian Wong, “U.S. Consulate’s Account Disappears from Chinese Social Media Site”, reveals that an American Consulate’s microblog from Beijing has suddenly disappeared fom the Internet due to mysterious “technical problems”. This appears to be a common problem with blogs that post on topics that are considered taboo. American should not expect to enjoy the same rights they experience at home even while on social media.
Indian Interior Advisor Rehman Malik says social media must be regulated. Read more here.
There has been a lot in the new lately about legislation restricting sex offenders from using social media, but it is still important that children are educated about using social media sites. Drishyia Nair’s article “Educate Children About Social Media Traps” outlines some of these issues.
Both public and private schools in Delaware are now subject to a law which prohibits them from requiring students to surrender their social media passwords. California and Maryland are debating similar legislation to protect student privacy. Neha Prakash discusses the issues in “Delaware Law to Give Students Increased Online Privacy.”
As a follow up to yesterday’s post on Twitter’s refusal to simply turn over your tweets to the Court, today we are providing a link to Twitter’s first Transparency Report. The report lists government requests for information, government requests to withhold information, and DMCA takedown notices received from copyright holders. The report is helpfully broken down by country. The blog post by Jeremy Kessel also announces a new partnership with Herdict, a Harvard-based initiative that “seeks to gain insight into what users around the world are experiencing in terms of web accessibility.”
Police in Michigan are refining and increasing how they use social media to solve and prevent crimes. Cecil Angel writes about how “Michigan Police Use Facebook, Twitter to Catch Crooks.” Michigan police are using social media to track down criminals, but they are also using it proactively to reach out to the public and to detect and prevent crime before in can happen.