Tags
Class D Felony, College, Communication, Destruction of Evidence, Divorce, Electronic Information, Electronically Stored Information, Employers, Evidence, Facebook, Password, Private Investigator, Regina M. Wexler, Right to Privacy, Shared Computer, Smoking Gun, Social Media, Social Networks, Unprotected Information, Wexler Family Law
The new ways in which we communicate in the 21st century have presented our society with a brand new set of challenges that affect all areas of our lives – especially our legal affairs. Where a private investigator may have once spent nights out in the street taking pictures, now the incriminating evidence is voluntarily shared across social networks.
Electronically Stored Information has become the new “smoking gun” of many divorces.
Case Study: A married couple decides on a divorce. Part of the wife’s argument for why she should have full custody of the children is her husband’s chronic drinking. He claims he has quit drinking. On Facebook, she comes across a picture one of his friends took showing him guzzling beer, dated recently. Additionally, Geo-tracking on the husband’s friend’s phone tagged the picture with his exact location, and it was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.
This picture may become evidence to be used in the divorce proceedings.
