Social Networking Sites Fair Game for Evidence

The Boston Herald reports on a New York Bar Association opinion that lawyers can ethically use social networking sites to gather information on opposing parties in lawsuits. The explosion in the use of networks like Facebook and MySpace raises new legal questions about privacy rights, the report states, but an opinion released last week by the bar’s Committee on Professional Ethics says the sites can be used to gather such information as long as it is publicly accessible. Attorneys cannot ask someone with private access to a person’s page to gather information for them, nor deceptively “friend someone,” for example.