Invasion of Privacy and Social Media

       Through much of the class discussion we have talked about the concept of Big Brother and Government poking their nose where they ought not to. Even corporations and businesses use social media to find better information about a potential employee. We hear stories about this all the time. Usually it can be an aid to law enforcement to find criminals who post pictures or videos of their acts and are ignorant enough to post it onto social media. However, when is too far? How far is the law enforcement allowed to go with searching through our lives looking for even the slightest hint of wrongful action. There is a fine line between exposing criminals and invasion of privacy not on the basis of wrongful action but on suspicion of fraudulent activity.

The article in particular talks about several sets of people around the world who were mistreated and faced serious consequences due to social media. Law enforcement in Canada charged and arrested a woman for being in a bar fight and she was not even in the bar that night. In fact she was at an art gallery and had proof that she was not at the bar. However the police overlooked this because there was a Facebook photo taken near the bar that matched a woman with the same hair style. Although her lawyer had the charges dismissed, she is still required to pay all of the fees associated with the wrongful conviction and has not received even an apology from the police. 

Similarly there was a man who was arrested for posting racial comments directed towards an athlete and was charged and jailed. Many speculate how this is a clear violation of freedom of speech regardless of what was said on the social media. Even in the United States a boy was expelled from his high school after posting a tweet using the “F” word. Regardless of how the school feels about his vulgar language, how are they going to expel a student on those grounds? Clearly in these circumstances some people have overstepped their bounds and used social media to such extremes to penalize people for what they are posting or doing. 

After looking at all of this it is kind of scary to think of how much our social media can actually be used against us. We must be careful of what we put out there as a lot of times this outlet can be used against us. In certain circumstances, like catching a criminal in the act, these methods prove to be very helpful to law enforcement and other agencies. But where is the line at? At what point does the government and other bodies go too far in analyzing our medias and give wrongful or extreme consequences for things that are not that serious. Clearly in several of the examples above the line has been obviously crossed. It is very scary to think of how powerful social media really is and the overlooked consequences that it could have.

Warmington, Joe. "Social (media) Injustice." : Prime Time : SunNews Video Gallery. Sun News, 04 Apr. 2012. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/video/1547642366001