Fergie's Tech Blog

Facebook and The Campus Cops

Ed Felten writes on Freedom to Tinker:

An interesting mini-controversy developed at Princeton last week over the use of the Facebook.com web site by Princeton’s Public Safety officers (i.e., the campus police).

The controversy started with a story in the Daily Princetonian revealing that Public Safety had used Facebook in two investigations. In one case, a student’s friend posted a photo of the student that was taken during a party in the student’s room. The photo reportedly showed the student hosting a dorm-room party where alcohol was served, which is a violation of campus rules. In another case, there was a group of students who liked to climb up the sides of buildings on campus. They had set up a building-climbers’ group on Facebook, and Public Safety reportedly used the group to identify the group’s members, so as to have Serious Discussions with them.

posted by Fergie @ 3/20/2006 07:14:00 AM