There are already cases where people consent to credit and background checks (fairly thorough; talking to neighbors, friends, etc. at length, for 7-10 years). These are voluntary checks for high level security clearances with the government.
I don't think it's unreasonable to include online social networking profiles in that.
Similarly, a court order should be able to get all the data from a profile, but not to allow the government to masquerade as you by logging in and actively communicating with others.
This has all been debated during the "key escrow" debate period; even the government wasn't able to make an argument for signing key escrow, only encryption key escrow. It's the same issue with a profile.
(I am generally against key escrow, but eliminating some classes of keys from the debate off the bat was a useful strategy then; it would be more useful now.)
> There are already cases where people consent to credit and background checks (fairly thorough; talking to neighbors, friends, etc. at length, for 7-10 years). These are voluntary checks for high level security clearances with the government.
The SSBI is not significantly more thorough than has become common for many private employees, and doesn't find, attempt to find, or care about a great deal of the personal information that may be found in a Facebook profile.
> Similarly, a court order should be able to get all the data from a profile, but not to allow the government to masquerade as you by logging in and actively communicating with others.
Facebook has been providing information in response to court orders for years, but does not provide the ability to masquerade as the user.
I don't think it's unreasonable to include online social networking profiles in that.
Similarly, a court order should be able to get all the data from a profile, but not to allow the government to masquerade as you by logging in and actively communicating with others.
This has all been debated during the "key escrow" debate period; even the government wasn't able to make an argument for signing key escrow, only encryption key escrow. It's the same issue with a profile.
(I am generally against key escrow, but eliminating some classes of keys from the debate off the bat was a useful strategy then; it would be more useful now.)