Technology

Friends or enemies of Facebook? They have served him

Social media sites are no strangers to the legal and research world. A lawyer, whether acting as a defense attorney or working for the prosecution, would be remiss if he did not do some basic searches on social media, and a private investigator could find the key to the case somewhere on Facebook or Twitter. A little searching could reveal that someone on the other side has done no good.

However, the use of Facebook officially authorized by the judicial system is quite recent. Australia was the first, in 2008, to allow a Facebook message as an alternative means of service of court documents, in that case a notice of foreclosure. Since then, the practice has become widespread in Australia and New Zealand, which Canada joined in 2011, the High Court of England allowed it in February 2012, and just a few weeks ago, a New York state court authorized a father to turn over child support documents to his ex-wife via Facebook message.

It is quite logical: people who are served legal documents of any kind usually do not want to be found. They have often run from known previous addresses and taken a number of steps to stay off the official radar, probably changing phone numbers and email addresses. This can make all traditional forms of service virtually impossible. In this era dominated by social media, Facebook seems like a viable alternative. Everyone knows a lot of people who are apparently unreachable outside of Facebook, but who are easy to find (and find out a lot about!) On Facebook.

However, there are a few things that the legal world must take into account. The court has to be satisfied that traditional document delivery has been attempted and not processed and that the Facebook account belongs to the right person and is still used regularly. In addition, all this has to be determined within the code of legal ethics that would prohibit the so-called predatory friendship. An investigator can’t just send a friend request to the man who defaulted on his mortgage to make sure he still gets messages that way.

The use of Facebook messages in such cases has often led cases to legal resolution – a good result, no doubt. In a little twist, Facebook is very happy about that too! When one might expect the company to want to avoid negative associations, when company spokespersons have spoken about it, they have expressed their appreciation that the courts have validated the security of Facebook’s internal messaging feature.

Who knows, it could lead to a new line of business for the social media site! There is already a growing link between the use of Facebook and divorce, and there are many Facebook pages, like this one, that offer free access to divorce documents and tools to file them. From start to finish, then from cause to resolution, Facebook, like Google before, can be everywhere. With an estimated 1.317 billion Facebook users, there are many potential players in the Facebook legal drama.

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