"On the phone with this fat chick... where my IHOP." Who would have thought that this sentence, or status update rather, would have changed someone's life.
This article, which I found on CNN.com, had one of the most compelling titles, that I just had to read it. It read, "Facebook status update provides alibi." To sum up the article, there was this Facebook status update one night, and about a minute later, across town, a robbery took place in New York City. That same guy who posted that status found out that the police were looking for him in connection to the robbery. Confident that he was innocent, he turned himself into police. However, he was picked out of a lineup and was going to be charged with the robbery. Turns out, that status update was enough proof of an alibi, and the charges were dropped. The DA contacted Facebook and confirmed that the update had come from the boys home, and that there was no way that he could have committed the robbery.
I'm sorry, but seriously? I know that Facebook has become a huge part of our lives, and has been able to change and update so many things, but to provide an alibi, who saw that coming?
It is very alarming to me that law enforcement officials would trust a Facebook update as an alibi for a robbery. Facebook statuses are easily manipulated and not grounds for an alibi, in my opinion. This worries me because as this story becomes more publicized I wonder what criminals will do in the future in utilizing social networking sites to their advantage in covering up their tracks in their crimes.
ReplyDeletewow. This reminds me of the movie "the invention of lying" when the guy was at the bank and wanted to withdraw all his money from his account and he didnt know what was in the account, but the system had gone down so the lady simply asked him how much was in his account and she would give it to him, assuming he wouldnt lie. This brings up a good point of how much we are beginning to trust statuses/tweets that people put out as what they are doing now. I think its a slippery slope that SNS's are headed in.
ReplyDeletewoah. That is kind of amazing. Social media is so powerful.
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