Judge Makes Divorcing Couple Swap Facebook Passwords

PolygamousRanchKid writes with news of a recent court order during divorce proceedings: both parties must give their social networking passwords to the other, so that each side can snoop for evidence. From the article: "Everyone knows that evidence from social networking sites comes in handy for lawsuits and divorces. Attorneys usually get that material by visiting someone’s page or asking that they turn over evidence from their page, not by signing into their accounts. But judges are sometimes forcing litigants to hand over the passwords to their Facebook accounts. Should they be? What was the reason behind the court-authorized hacking in the Gallion case? ... While all may be ‘fair’ in love and war (and personal injuries), password exchanges like this are not kosher according to Facebook’s terms of service. I wonder if Judge Shluger is aware that his order violates Facebook’s TOS, which require that users not hand over their passwords to anyone else. Shluger did, at least, try to limit the privacy invasiveness of his order by telling the parties not to prank each other. 'Neither party shall visit the website of the other’s social network and post messages purporting to be the other,' he included in the order."

Re:"hacking"

[masternerdguy]

Teabagging is a time honored tradition of victory in the FPS world. It is based on an ancient and deep symbolism practiced by warriors since antiquity.

Re:divorce

[jpapon]

Spoilation of evidence? Is that when you give away the ending of a cop drama?

Spoilation alert!

Re:"hacking"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the cited by the UN as the preferred resolution of diplomatic process when there are accusations of noob faggotry between two peoples.

It not only feels good, it's the law.

Re:Terms of Service

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that every would-be lawyer who's watched 3 or more episodes of Law & Order thinks that his legal insights about contract law are brilliant and worth sharing?

I bet the lawyers for both parties haven't even considered this line of reasoning, and wouldn't have used it on appeal if you hadn't brought it up here. I bet they didn't even use it when arguing about this order in front of the judge in the first place!

It's a good thing Slashdot has so many bar-qualified lawyers willing to do some monday morning quarterbacking for those clearly-incompetent boobs involved in the cases reported on here.

Re:Take the Facebook Password

[JRowe47]

Well, crap. You mean life's not fair? Damn it all.