Source: https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/06/post_1.htm
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 16:31:23+00:00

Document:
With the proliferation of the use of social network profile evidence, it was only a matter of time before a court dealt with the issue of whether you can subpoena someone’s Facebook page in a civil lawsuit. A judge in the Central District of California looks at the issue in Crispin v. Audigier [scribd].
14 days after Audigier served the subpoenas, Crispin moved to quash the subpoenas. [Facebook, MySpace, and Media Temple did not appear or file pleadings.] The magistrate judge found that the Stored Communications Act did not apply, and in any event only precluded voluntary disclosure (and did not apply to compelled disclosure pursuant to a civil subpoena). Finally, the magistrate judge found that the SCA only prohibited disclosure of communications held “in storage,” which wasn’t the type of information covered by the subpoena.
3. 18 U.S.C. sec. 2703(e) does not permit disclosure pursuant to a civil subpoena.
5. Facebook, Media Temple, and MySpace provide “private messaging or email services . . . such services can constitute [‘electronic communications services’] . . . .” Case law looking to the treatment of private BBS services is helpful. Public BBS services are not entitled to protection under the SCA.
[since] Facebook permits wall messages to ‘be viewed by anyone with access to the users profile page‘. . . there is no basis for distinguishing between a restricted-access BBS and a user’s Facebook wall or Myspace comments. There similarly is no basis for distinguishing between Media Temple’s webmail and Facebook’s and MySpace’s private messaging, on the one hand, and traditional web-based email on the other. As a consequence, the court concludes that each of Media Temple, Facebook, and MySpace is an ECS provider.
9. Citing to the City of Detroit text messaging decision (Flagg v. City of Detroit) the court notes that “an ECS provider [becomes] an RCS [remote computing service] provider after a communication has been read and stored.” It seems factually unclear (but legally relevant) as to whether the services provide storage or backup/archival services.
in the context of a social-networking site such as Facebook or MySpace, there is no temporary, intermediate step for wall postings or comments. Unlike an email, there is no step whereby a Facebook wall posting must be opened, at which point it is deemed delivered. Thus a Facebook wall posting or a MySpace comment is not protectable as a form of temporary, intermediate storage.
11. In the alternative, the court holds that Facebook and MySpace are RCS providers with respect to the wall postings and comments.
End Result: the court quashes the portions of the Facebook and MySpace subpoenas that sought “private messaging,” and remands for further development of the record on the wall postings and comments.
It’s a pretty dense order that is worth reading, if nothing, to get a sense of the complexity of the issues that arise in this context, and the lay of the land as far as case law.
Another interesting aspect of the dispute is that Facebook didn’t appear or file any pleadings. I assume Facebook has a blanket policy objecting to these types of subpoenas, but maybe timing was an issue here? In contrast, Facebook recently successfully quashed a subpoena issued to it in another civil case (Barnes v. CUS Nashville, LLC, No. 3:09-0764 (M.D. Tenn.) (May 27, 2010)). There, the magistrate judge concluded that “the SCA prohibit[ed] the disclosure of [the sought after] information in response to a subpoena” [citing Flagg v. City of Detroit].
In any event, parties (employers, and even lawyers) should tread carefully here. See, e.g., Theofel v. Farey-Jones and Hillstone Restaurant Group v. Pietrylo.

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