A recent report claimed that U.S Law enforcement agents log into the different social networking sites for investigation and this, as per experts makes it tough for people who frequent such sites as any of their personal messages can be used as an evidence against them in case of any dispute. This is the reason why everyone needs to be careful while sharing details in various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently obtained a document belonging to the internal Justice Department which gives a brief of these four major networking sites and the how information is obtained from there. This document also showed that the federal agents can use the sites to gather different kinds of valuable information which would aid their investigation. These agents have the legal sanction to use the information as evidence and the sites often reveal the personal communications, provide information on location, prove as well as disprove alibis and thus establish crime as well as criminal enterprise.
Take for example the case of Lori Drew. In 2008, the Missouri resident Lori Drew was prosecuted for using a fake identity in the networking site My Space. He created a fake account and used it for tormenting his daughter’s school mates. Following the suicide of the school mate, he was convicted and his whereabouts were revealed by the social media sites.
So how willing are the social media sites to disclose information for investigation? The report suggests that Facebook often co-operates in case of emergency requests while Twitter does not preserve any data without any legal process. Overall it seems that social media is an useful tool for the investigators.