Students may find that incriminating photos of themselves on facebook.com are leading to less desirable photos – police mug shots – as police departments and university authorities across the country increasingly use the popular website to identify and prosecute students who have broken the law.
At several schools, students have faced disciplinary action because their posted messages and photos reveal their participation in illegal activities.
Photo tags in an album titled “I rushed the field after the OSU game and lived” helped Pennsylvania State University campus police find students involved in a recent post-game victory riot.
Facebook.com, a vastly popular online social network for college students, is one of many methods that the Penn State University Police are using to identify and prosecute fans who rushed the field after the Oct. 8 Ohio State game, said University Police Assistant Director Tyrone Parham.
“We are doing as much as we can to identify people who violated the law,” Parham said. “Facebook is a method we are using, but it’s one of many – some pictures are on people’s personal Web pages and there are cameras inside the stadium that can zoom in pretty well.”
Investigators are turning to the pictures posted in online photo albums, video footage from the field and member groups from Facebook to identify as many fans as possible, Parham said.
Emilie Romero, OSU junior, said a university police officer called her Nov. 1 and said he had identified her as a student who had rushed the field after the Ohio State game from her photos on her Webshots, an online photo album she maintains.
Romero said she posted a photo on her Webshots that clearly showed her on the field after the Ohio State game.
“I didn’t know they could do that,” she said. “This really scares me.”
Romero said she has not been officially charged with anything, but she was told she could face up to two years in jail, up to $2,000 in fines and sanctions from the university’s Office of Judicial Affairs.
These tactics, she learned, are perfectly legal.
Groups such as “I rushed the field after the OSU game (and lived!)” are acting as “laundry lists of suspects” for the police to interview, said Communications and Law Professor Clay Calvert, who is a co-director for the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment.
“If it’s accessible to the public, it’s fair game,” Calvert said. “People have expectations of privacy in cyberspace that don’t exist.”
Posting a declaration on Facebook.com or any other personal page is the equivalent of hanging a sign outside the Willard Building, telecommunications professor Matthew Jackson said. Police have just as much legal right to view that sign as they do a public access Web site, he said.
In addition to joining a facebook.com group that links a student with illegal activities, students can also find themselves under investigation for posting defamatory political comments.
According to The Oklahoma Daily, Saul Martinez, a student at Oklahoma University last March, was questioned by a Secret Service agent for a comment he posted on the “Bush sucks” group on Facebook. The comment that prompted the investigation involved a plan to collect money to hire an assassin and to replace the President with a monkey.
At Northern Kentucky University, students have been disciplined for underage drinking in their dorms after photos of the incidents were posted on Facebook. NKU Dean of Students Kent Kelso said the administration at NKU looked into the Facebook photos as evidence of students’ misdeeds after being tipped off by another source. When the administration followed up on the accusation, they found the Facebook photos that led them to the students involved in the illegal activity.
With incriminating photos and physical evidence in students’ dorm rooms, Kelso said the students confessed to their actions.
“Facebook gave us the people. It made it kind of easy, you have an obligation to follow up [on an anonymous tip]” he said, adding that Facebook was only a tool in the normal investigative process.
“I don’t have any staff that are spending their time on Facebook,” Kelso said. However, “using the internet to pursue judicial cases isn’t new. Facebook just makes it a heck of a lot easier.”
Kelso said that in the past, when students had been victimized or harassed by other students, internet postings have provided key evidence in proceedings.
He added that Facebook and other internet sites are useful for perceiving not only student drinking but also cases involving possible drug use, violence or suicide.
Shawn McGuirk, director of judicial affairs for Fitchburg State College, said in an email that “generally speaking, administrators use Facebook for a number of reasons. Some believe that it’s a good way to connect with students. Others use it to stay in touch with friends and colleagues. Some just think it’s a fun thing to utilize.”
When used by judicial administrators, McGuirk said they “will use it indirectly as part of their judicial process … I have heard more often than not that a judicial administrator will access Facebook when they have been informed that an egregious violation of policy is evident on the site. I have not often heard that professionals will use it to snoop around.”
McGuirk adds, however, that “all you need to access Facebook is a .edu email.”
McGuirk said he knows alumni from various schools with .edu email addresses, and when looking for potential employees, “they will sometimes review Facebook as part of a hiring process.”
According to McGuirk, as far he knows, such practices are legal.
“Facebook is not a secure site, but a person can adjust his/her privacy settings,” he said. “Most students do not do this. I think in general people need to better understand that the information they post on Facebook, as well as other sites, can be viewed by hundreds of people if they don’t adjust their setting properly.
“If you’re going to put info or pictures on [Facebook] that violate policy … you have to be prepared to be questioned about it in the very least,” he added.