“Privacy is no longer grounded in reasonable expectations, but rather in some theoretical protocol better known as wishful thinking.”
Pretty harsh—but also pretty accurate. This is the language from the judge in a recent ruling in the New York case, Romano v. Steelcase Inc., 2010 WL 3703242 (N.Y.Sup. September 21, 2010) regarding online privacy. I found this case on Twitter through @internetcases, which is the profile of Evan Brown, an attorney in Chicago. You can read his summary of the case here.
In essence, this case addressed whether information on the Plaintiff’s Facebook and Myspace pages could be withheld during discovery, irrespective of her privacy settings. (“Discovery” is a legal term describing a period of time during which the parties use various methods to gather as many facts as possible about the case). As you can tell from the quote at the top of this post, the judge determined that all of the contents had to be turned over to the other party.
Tip: While this isn't a Georgia case and doesn't pertain to workers' compensation, there's nonetheless an important lesson to be learned here: social media sites can affect your case in a negative way, and courts aren’t allowing people to hide harmful information. And based on this ruling, this is true even if you think you have “hidden” it from the public in your personal privacy settings, or if you have deleted certain content! (Yep, Facebook and Myspace store deleted information). So, again, be careful what you broadcast to the public, because it may very well come back to bite you.
Hi therе! This post couldn't be written any better! Reading this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept talking about this. I will forward this write-up to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read. Thank you for sharing!
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