Know Before You Post: Social Media, Search Warrants and Your Case

At Kane & Crowell, Attorneys at Law, we emphasize the significance of social media in legal cases. Your online posts can become evidence, just as you can use others’ posts in your case. Accessing these posts, especially deleted or hidden ones, often requires complex steps. Ideally, capturing screenshots or images of relevant posts is essential. For inaccessible posts, you may need a subpoena or court order.

Social media companies sometimes argue that providing user information violates constitutional rights. This argument revolves around privacy and free speech rights. Our team skillfully navigates these legal complexities. We balance legal evidence needs with digital privacy concerns. Our approach ensures legally sound and ethically responsible evidence use. We advise clients to be cautious with their online activities. Contact us for guidance on social media’s impact on your legal matters.

Are you aware that what you post on social media may be used against you in your case?  Likewise, you may use another party’s social media posts against them in your case. However, obtaining proof of these posts is not always easy. Ideally, you would be able to get an image of the posts. A subpoena or court order may be needed to recover posts that have been deleted or hidden. Some social media companies have argued it violates people’s constitutional rights to force them to provide someone’s social media account information or history.

Here is a link to an article regarding a recent NY Court of Appeals decision on whether Facebook must give access to their users’ posts. The Court decided Facebook must comply with requests to access user data. 

Contact Kane & Crowell Attorneys at Law at www.kane-law.com or at (615) 784-4800. Let us put our experience to work for you.