I kind of understand what you're trying to get at here.

Say, I logged onto somebody elses account, on some social network site, and I made all these claims stating I did this, and burnt that place down. Killed a man.
Now.. this is all on somebody elses page. Technically speaking, according to the site at least, their name said it.

If the things said were of enough importance to get attention from the authorities, than, chances are, they would investigate.

First off, of course, they'd check out this person. Whos' name you've been using. They might notice the random spike in weird, obscure comments though.

If it was really serious business, they'd eventually go and do what Snoz mentioned.



Than, they would eventually find out where it was coming from. Finding your, personal IP address.
I mean.. yes, you could probably use public wifi, or town computers or something. To take them off your track.
But.. that'd be a real hassle, just to flame somebody else.

Defamation of character pops to mind too in the midst of my post.


Please.. Please, don't take this post as me trying to stir the hornets nest. I can just see what each of you is talking about. Both sides make sense.

But, it's the internet. Laws in these places(the internet).. are a little murky. To say the least. Privacy and all that, it's hard to keep.

What a1pha said...but I enjoy hypotheticals, so here's a fun one


So...let's say your case has reached a jury.

This raises the question of why are you in front of a jury to begin with?

You've reached a jury because the police decided they had evidence/cause to believe you committed a crime and therefore arrested you. Let's say, in this case, it was because you made a status update that stated "Man, nothing beats the sight of cubensis pinning in your closet!!" Let's say someone happened to notice this update and it somehow came to the attention of the police.

The police contact the judge for a warrant to search your house (specifically closet or closet-like areas) on suspicion that you are manufacturing a controlled substance. The police show the judge this status update and argue that it is, in essence, a public proclamation that you are cultivating hallucinogenic fungi in your house.

The judge agrees and notes that your expectation of privacy is pretty much nonexistent when making a post to a social media site (that literally exists for no other purpose than to interact with and inform other people about your goings on) and the terms and conditions clearly state that once you make a post, it doesn't belong to you anyway and becomes property of SocialMedia Inc. Now, even if you had some expectation of privacy on a social media site (bit of an oxymoron, no?), once you have posted, SocialMedia can choose to do whatever they want with what is now their post, including informing the police about potentially illegal activities, or at least making any information they want available to them.

So now you're sitting in front of a jury...what exactly is your defense?

Shouldn't SocialMedia Inc be on trial then???
If it's their post and not yours?

sorry for the spanner in the works...I know very little of the law

That was great cyb...I really appreciated it.

They own the post, which was authored by you. So in this case, they essentially own your confession. I'm not a legal expert by any means, just spent some classes and time engaged with some of these ideas and enjoy the thought exercises around them.

Rats...

Well I was thinking more along the lines of using your social media site to put you in a demographic and monitor you because of your interests and such.


But in that case I would think that the defense would rest on errors in obtaining the warrant and the inability to prove that you actually posted that.

So you get caught with the shrooms growing but how did the police get the right to invade your home and find them? If they did some shifty things that would make the jury uncomfortable then you have a better chance of it getting thrown out.

There was a case where a guy got caught with 1000 xtc tabs in his car. The police that found them did something or another wrong in their search and seizure and he walked.

And if they assume that it was you that wrote the post but there is no witness that saw your hands typing it, then anyone could have sat down and wrote the post. If you said nothing to the LE then who is to say that same person didn't put the pins in your closet. Not a defense to use or anything but with the possibility of these things being true it puts holes in the "guilt without a reasonable doubt" which would at least make for a good appeal. Social sites are not hard evidence I believe. I know lie detectors are not admissible in court for sure. They can only be used to work with the prosecutor but acannot be presented on trial.

Many worse defenses have held in court. The reason I said those two things is because the jury of your peers wouldn't want to make a case that would set such a standard in the future. Once the law is pressed that far it will go further and things like that would threaten the security of citizens.

I mean it could happen but if it did then it would be a great turning point. And Socialsite.inc would be much less popular which would hurt sales and all the great research they are doing on the masses.

Jury of your peers? Just to be clear, what type(s) of crime are we talking about here?

Well at first I wasnt talking about a crime. But it is interesting discuss so.... I guess that could make a difference. Even so, and I may be wrong, but even a capitol offense can be thrown out if taken all the way to jury trial with a good lawyer and the evidence that seals the case is an online post.

I have however, heard of them using a social sight to pin point he location of someone who just committed an offense.

Oh I want to add I am not advocating committing a violent crime or trying to get away with any crime. Just discussing Social sites.

Yeah...last year, here in the UK, we had a large ongoing riot around the country and a lot of people were harshly dealt with after the law tracked them 'inciting' on social media.

Since then laws have been passed that gives the authorities free reign over FB and Twit etc.

Nothing is safe anymore...it's a sad time for (not so) free speech...

You might find this interesting: AP Exclusive: CIA following Twitter, Facebook

This is what I do to stay totally safe when talking about illegal drugs (I quit all illegal drugs last week tho so I'll use this to communicate with my friends about dmt, my only exception):

1) I created a seperate Gmail account than my normal one

2) I told my friends what the email was on Gmail chat because Gmail chat is not saved

3) now when we want to talk, we just text each other to get on "chat", don't even mention gmail in our phones because AT&T & Verizon can store texts, phone calls, & other records for up to 5-7 years, law enforcement has no problem retrieving these

4) everything we say in chat disappear forever. if we want to send each other an email instead of real-time chatting, we delete the email (gmail trash lasts 30 days until its forever deleted, OR you can instantly delete it forever by going into trash and doing so)

5) there is no link to anything at all, unless gmail is sectrely keeping emails or chat records. i believe it's the safest yet easiest way for us to communicate about dmt. I do not sell any, but I do help my close friends out with life-changing experiences and dmt's that avenue.

6) of course this doesn't need to be with gmail, it could be with some sort of other chat system. in fact i might find one of those stupid teen chat systems that are online to replace the gmail system since I am not sure the gmail actually deletes chat records forever/trash email forever after 30 days

call me paranoid, but i'm trying to be as safe as possible. if I'm wrong somewhere or something I can be doing better, please let me know!

Gualapa, can you cite some sources that state Gmail & Google Chat messages are not stored. My understanding is that ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in Google is stored, logged and indexed.

In addition, I've read (unofficially) that any alias used is linked to your primary Gmail account if you access it from the same IP address.

Any information you can provide would be most interesting.

instead of trying to find loopholes from which to incriminate oneself safely, just say what you mean in a non incriminating way. if you type with this intent, having accountability to a specific account shouldnt mean anything. one can suggest anything without referring to themselves or something real. with the world as bizzarre and crazy as it is, i take no stock in a defense by "it wasnt me, incriminating me" rather i employ, "yes it was me, not incriminating myself"

Nope, you just proved me wrong with aliases being possibly linked thru IP's. I just went off the basic google page info/support pages.. guess I should researched more.

Nevertheless, I can use the same method except with some sort of crappy, cheap chat site or plug-in that doesn't store data. I don't have a specific site but I know there's cheap, unpopular chat apps/sites out there.

While law enforcement can get all kind of information, it's not always easy and it costs money. I don't think they would go to such lengths as trying to get chat records from google unless they already had a good case against someone.

As for google, chat conversations are all saved (unless you opt not to have them saved, in which case they most likely save them anyway, but don't give you access.)

Interesting