Is it proper for police to use evidence they find posted on show-and-tell-all-about-me-me-me web site MySpace? A June 8, 2006 Salon article explores that question:
“If it is a public forum that is accessible to others, then presumably the police are welcome to participate, as they would be welcome to enter a shopping mall or something like that,” Rotenberg says.
Kurt Opsahl, a staff lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to defend Internet free speech, agrees.
“You have of course a Constitutional right not to incriminate yourself, but you have to exercise that right by not incriminating yourself,” Opsahl says. “If you post a photo of yourself engaged in apparently illegal activity with text confirming what you’re doing, that can be used against you. Anything you say can and will be used against you, as they say in the Miranda warnings.”
But according to James McNamee, MySpace’s younger users, or at least the ones he sees in his virtual patrols, haven’t yet caught on to that.