My dad forwarded me a news article about Amanda Tatro, a University of Minnesota who recently was recently banned from the UMN campus because of her Facebook posts. The Star Tribune reported that Tatro, a mortuary science student, posted messages that others found disturbing and threatening. Specifically, she talked about using a trocar (sharp object used in the mortuary field) to take out her aggression in class.

Although I found the story disturbing, I started to ponder a few questions that I did not (still don’t, by the way) have the answers to.

• When can police and the law use material from social media outlets as evidence/reasoning for cases in the offline world?
• Is there a governing body that has created a standard of ethics for the law, stating when it is and is not appropriate to use online-based content for offline purposes?

Earlier this semester, a friend told me about a case in La Crosse, Wis. where police created a fake Facebook account and friended students at a local university to track their drinking habits. Some of the friended students were called into the police station and handed underage drinking citations.

I don’t believe that the police found the evidence of underage drinking in an ethical fashion. Making a false account on Facebook, in my opinion, is wrong and should not stem from the government. Don’t get me wrong when I say that making a fake account is wrong- I follow a few different TV characters on Twitter who don’t actually exist. It’s wrong, however, when the average person cannot distinguish the falsity of an identity online (Mashable posted an article on fake Facebook profiles).

As social media continues to grow and evolve, I feel that large changes in law and ethics will follow.

I might think twice the next time that I post my grumbles about schoolwork the next time that I log onto Facebook. Then again, I would probably talk about throwing my computer out a window instead of using sharp objects.

Read the Minneapolis Star Tribune article mentioned above by clicking here.

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