Watch Your FACE!

I'm an admitted addict of Facebook, the college networking site that's rapidly become one of the most popular sites on the internet, period. So I read with interest this post at Freedom to Tinker, about college security staff using Facebook to assist investigations on Princeton students [H/T: Orin Kerr].

The controversy started with a story in the Daily Princetonian revealing that Public Safety had used Facebook in two investigations. In one case, a student's friend posted a photo of the student that was taken during a party in the student's room. The photo reportedly showed the student hosting a dorm-room party where alcohol was served, which is a violation of campus rules. In another case, there was a group of students who liked to climb up the sides of buildings on campus. They had set up a building-climbers' group on Facebook, and Public Safety reportedly used the group to identify the groupÂ’s members, so as to have Serious Discussions with them.

Students were outraged over the alleged violation of their privacy. As the post author notes, this is apeculiarr reaction, because anybody with a Princeton email address (which includes the security staff) can get a facebook account and look at anything other Princeton facebook page (you have to "friend" people from other schools to see their profile, but your schoolmates are fair game regardless of whether they are friends or not). Given that, it's difficult to argue that a student really has a fair expectation of privacy regarding anything he or she posts onto the site.

Still, Facebook feels more private than it is. Most people, I feel, think of it as a virtual place to hang out and casually swap stories with friends. They don't think of it as effectively in the public domain. This image/reality gap is troublesome.

In any event, a warning to all facebook users. You may be being watched. Act accordingly.