How Social Media Is Pushing the Limits of Legal Ethics

That some people simply cannot keep their social media usage to an acceptable level is no secret. Only unlike a student spending the entirety of Biology 101 updating her Facebook page or an NBA player tweeting from the locker room, this type of behavior can have real consequences when the user in question is sitting in a courtroom. The legal community has taken notice, and this week the American Bar Association held an entire event dedicated to the cause, complete with a keynote from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. However, although the legal community has caught on to the fact that its very traditional profession isn’t immune to the effects of social media, it’s far from having figured out the far-reaching effects that social media might have, much less having found many workable solutions.
And it affects the entire legal process, from jurors tweeting while sitting in the jury box to judges exposing potential biases on their Facebook accounts. Everyone has a cell phone, a computer and, likely, at least one social media account, so there are plenty of avenues on which to cross ethical lines.

Tweeting from the jury box: Public enemy No. 1?

Juror tweets have already made plenty of headlines, most recently when Steve Martin tweeted death penalty jokes while doing jury duty. In 2009, an Arkansas juror in a civil case tweeted — supposedly after the verdict had been issued — insults about the defendant in the case, and the plaintiff sought a declaration of mistrial based in part on those tweets. In November 2010, a Washington juror in a death-penalty case tweeted after getting selected for jury duty “OMG! jdg picked me 2 decide doods f8! Looks gil-t frm here ;-).” Although the judge scolded the juror, he was allowed to remain on; the case resulted in a hung jury.
According to Ben Holden, director of the Reynolds Center for Courts and Media, jurors using social media during the trial is a big deal, but it takes on different flavors that not all judges or attorneys understand. A juror pontificating, or pushing information out, is easy enough to deal with: If the information is discovered and shows a bias, the judge (hopefully) removes him. But Holden says that jurors pulling information is a far more complex issue and can end up polluting the entire jury pool. Tweeting jurors could have their opinions swayed by their cyberspace contacts, or they could actually conduct outside research on the case, which is a big no-no. Jennifer Lynch, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, describes these situations as the intersection of parties’ right to a fair trial with jurors’ free speech rights.
It’s anyone’s guess how a judge will react in any given situation. Holden said that some judges are particularly naive about social media. “I find some judges I’ve spoken with either don’t fully understand how pervasive social media … is, or they don’t respect it enough,” he said. “[T]hey don’t see it as fundamentally different from newspapers, magazines or the town crier.” But some judges do get it, and their reactions might be as draconian — and potentially unconstitutional — as their colleagues’ opinions are naive. According to Lynch, some judges are actually demanding jurors’ social media login information so the judge and attorney can monitor their web activity during the case.




An aircraft with a serial number and a construction number from some squadron on final approach for some runway at what I believe was an Air Force base.

Your Facebook profile could get you out of jury duty

Jurors’ web activity presents other issues, too. Some attorneys are using Facebook profiles and tweets to both select a jury and cater their trial strategies based on what they find. Researching jurors is nothing new, though, and Lynch points out that there’s probably not much wrong with attorneys using even publicly available information from social media services to this end. Actually, a few bar associations even have authorized the practice in advisory opinions, she noted. At this point, the clear ethical line appears to be at creating fake profiles to friend jurors and access information in someone’s private account — a prohibition that extends to unearthing evidence about parties during the discovery process.
But the problem isn’t that simple. Maybe one attorney is, as Holden put it, “a friend of a friend of a friend of a Facebook friend” and has access to certain juror information that the opposing attorney doesn’t have. That attorney hasn’t necessarily done anything wrong, but, Holden asks, “Do you really want to have a system of law where the Sixth Amendment turns a blind eye to the fact that a lawyer happens to have friended someone who allows [the lawyer] into an account … giving them access to information on the prosecution side that perhaps the defense lawyer doesn’t get because he’s not a friend?” It’s one thing to gain an edge because of due diligence in a fair fight, but he sees a problem with cases potentially being decided because of an attorney’s social graph.

Can a Foursquare check-in prove an alibi or seal one’s fate?

For criminal defendants and civil litigants, their social media profiles can provide a rich field of evidence. Lynch said that judges now see a lot of social-media-derived evidence, which might inspire citizens, in general, to think about how they use the services. MySpace is still rather popular among individuals who end up in the criminal justice system, she explained, and Facebook photos could be used to disprove the extent of damage in a personal injury case. Even if attorneys don’t undertake underhanded methods to access private information, Lynch noted that profile photos are always available.
Additionally, noted Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at Citrix, Facebook privacy settings are sometimes rolled back with updates, potentially making once-private information public. In other instances, he suggested, Foursquare check-ins could be used for a multitude of purposes, from finding potential witnesses to a crime, to helping prove whether a defendant was where he said he was. Knowing the potential for their previous social media activity to be used against them, Roemer also pointed to a trend among UK young adults of legally changing their names when entering the workforce to disassociate themselves with their Facebook accounts.

Should judges ‘friend’ lawyers, or be on Facebook at all?

Judges and lawyers aren’t immune from the ethical pitfalls of social media, either. EFF’s Lynch notes that attorneys tweeting or posting Facebook status updates that even casually relate to cases could violate the attorney-client privilege, and that rules restricting how attorneys solicit business also extend to social media. The Reynolds Center’s Holden cites, among other issues, possible concerns over ex parte communications stemming from judges friending attorneys that have cases before the judge. Whereas Ohio generally allows such relationships provided judges remain vigilant, Florida has taken a relatively hard-line stance against the practice.
At this point, it’s unclear that the legal system will get a handle on which social media practices are acceptable and which are not anytime soon. Lynch thinks there might be clear solutions to specific problems, but acknowledges that it’s a topic not easily addressable on a broad scale. Holden, who also heads up a new academic publication called the Courts and Media Law Journal, concurs. “We’re going to kill enough trees for 500 pages in a year [on this subject],” he said, “and we will not come up with an answer.”
Image courtesy of Flickr user Valerie Everett.

Can guys at Large Hadron Collide (LHC) discover anything all ?

He looks more like a pop star than a particle physicist (but then he did have a No1 hit single). But how did Britain's top TV scientist go from touring alongside Take That to working on the Large Hadron Collider?

'I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that's what I have,' said Brian Cox

Scientists shouldn’t look like this. They should have wild hair like Einstein or wild eyes like Patrick Moore, not amble into the room looking as if they’ve just come off stage at Glastonbury. But this is Professor Brian Cox, known as the ‘rock-star scientist’ and described by People magazine as the World’s Sexiest Quantum Physicist, a title that makes him sigh.
‘They were doing an  A to Z of desirable people and needed to put someone in the Q category. Who else could it be?’
Cox prefers to call himself a particle physicist, which is apparently all about ‘trying to understand what everything is made of and how everything sticks together’.
But suddenly he’s also become the nation’s favourite scientist, able to make television viewers swoon – or at least watch in rapt attention – as he explains the wonders of the universe. Lots of women say the professor makes their particles accelerate – and quite a few men do, too.
‘Yeah. Well. There you go. I take that as a compliment. Gia says she thought I was gay when we first met, and therefore she could have a non-threatening night out with me.’
He’s talking about his wife Gia Milinovich, the American producer he met ten years ago. They got off to a bad start.
‘She saw me on television with the sound turned down and thought, “Oh no, they’ve hired another mindless pretty idiot from a pop band.”’
That was a fair guess. Cox had only recently stopped playing keyboards with D:Ream, whose No 1 single Things Can Only Get Better had put him on Top Of The Pops. Gia was a serious-minded woman working on science shows for an internet television channel. She took a look at his pop-star clothes, Stone Roses haircut and wide smile, and groaned.
‘Then she saw that my email address was from CERN (the research centre in Switzerland and home to the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator). She is a geek herself, so she was like, “Oh, wow. Maybe you’re not mindless after all.”’
That story illustrates the two sides of Brian Cox perfectly. On the one hand he’s a boyishly handsome performer who looks good on camera. On the other he’s a serious scientist who was studying for a first-class degree in physics even while he was with D:Ream.
‘I was into science as far back as I can remember. The Apollo Moon landings happened when I was only a year old, but my dad loved all that and had posters up on the wall. Then when I got into music later, it was because of the electronics, the synthesisers.’
Cox gave up playing with D:Ream in the late Nineties to become a research scientist at Manchester University, and was sent on secondment to CERN – hence the email address that impressed Gia so much. It was his work there, leading a team, that earned Cox a professorship. Still, when they got married his name was only really known to academic peers.

'I am a geek. To me, that's someone who is immersed in science and engineering and all the real things about the universe and who values exploration and discovery. Not fluff'

Then came the Big Bang, or rather CERN’s attempt to recreate conditions as they were at the creation of the universe, by firing particles at great speed around a vast underground loop and smashing them together.
The launch transformed his life. Cox was nominated as a spokesman, and although charming he also had an edge to him, sounding like Liam Gallagher in a lab coat: ‘Anyone who thinks LHC will destroy the world is a t***.’
The BBC swooped. His first series, Wonders Of The Solar System, attracted six million viewers last year. The reason for that was Cox himself. Even in  the flesh, you’d guess Cox was ten years younger than 42. Expect to see lots of close-ups this month in his new show Wonders Of The Universe. But it also contains a hefty dose of science.
‘I insist on that. I like there to be some piece of science in it that’s done really well. You can’t do many because it’s not the Open University and I’m as aware of that as the BBC schedulers are, but in the first programme of the new series we talk about something called the second law of thermodynamics, which is notoriously difficult to explain. We’ve had a really good go at it.’
I’ve heard his explanation before: ‘The second law of thermodynamics means that if you want to process information, if your brain wants to work, then you need an energy source. We put energy in by eating things. When you’re alive, everything works. When you die, it’s like pulling a plug out of the wall. The law says that  everything tends to disorder.’
He smiles when he talks about concepts like that, but then he smiles all the time. Some scientists are intimidating but Cox comes across as a matey Lancashire lad who just happens to have a brain the size of a planet.
‘I am a geek. To me, that’s someone who is immersed in science and engineering and all the real things about the universe and who values exploration and discovery. Not fluff. I think pop music is less interesting than the Apollo Moon landings. That’s a geek.’
As for his new-found celebrity, if the paparazzi tried to snatch a picture of Cox he’d probably ask what camera lens they were using.
‘I got used to attention from people when I was with D:Ream and we were touring with Take That and so on. There’s more now, and it does make some things difficult, like when you’re walking down the street and people recognise you. But it doesn’t bother me that much.’
The young Cox did science and maths at A level, and at home in Oldham he loved watching The Sky At Night.
‘That show was really big for me. Patrick Moore influenced a lot of people of my generation. I filmed the 700th Sky At Night this week with Patrick. I took a book down with me, a school prize I won in 1979, a Patrick Moore Observer’s Book Of Astronomy. I got him to sign it. That was brilliant.’
Moore won over people with sheer enthusiasm and Cox does the same today.

D-Ream on stage in the mid-Nineties. Cox played keyboards (rear of picture)

‘I want people to have an emotional response to science, because that’s what I have. Thinking about the stars throws you outside of your own world and into the universe, and it is inspirational. Think about how rare life is, for example.
'The universe has been going for 11 billion years and will carry on until that moment in the future when it might end, which we predict might be around a year that can be written as ten followed by 100 noughts. In all of that time, the period when conditions have been right for life to exist will have been ludicrously small, a tiny sliver.
'Now think about the size of the universe, which may be infinite. So far, we can only say that there is life on this one tiny Earth. So in all that time and space life is very rare indeed, and rarity makes things valuable. That can make you feel extremely small but it should also make you feel special because we live in a moment and place that is so rare and precious.’
So is there only life on Earth?
‘There are missions going to look for life on Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Europa. If I was to put money on it I’d say that they’d find microbes on Mars in the next ten to 15 years. The big question is whether it is the same as life on Earth. If it turns out that it evolved separately, and is very different, then I think that will be huge; probably the biggest discovery in human history. I do expect that will be the case.’

So there is life on Mars, you heard it here first. But he’s talking about microbes and I want to know about aliens.
‘Are there little green men up there? Ha. You would think there must be. It’s a paradox which Enrico Fermi, the great physicist, pointed out. He said that because there are so many planetary systems and there has been so much time, then even if just one other civilisation has arisen, say a million years before us, the evidence should be there to see, it should be all over the place.
'If we don’t mess  up we will be all over the galaxy in a thousand years. So my instinct would be yes, the galaxy should be crawling with civilisations. But we’ve looked and there’s no evidence. I honestly don’t understand it.’
Cox is a science-fiction fan who fell in love with his wife when he saw what was in her flat.
‘Any woman who collects Star Wars toys is fine by me.’ It remains to be seen whether their baby son George will turn out like his dad and be a ‘bus spotter’.
‘When I was a boy I had a book of all the serial numbers of the buses working in Greater Manchester and I ticked them off. I like buses. I went on to spot planes after that. Then when I got into music at 15 it was all about the electronics, with bands like Kraftwerk and early Ultravox.’

The large Hadron Colider is an attempt to recreate conditions as they were at the creation of the universe, by firing particles at great speed around a vast underground loop and smashing them together

He might have been obsessed with electronics, but the first band he joined was all about guitars and mullets.
‘Dare were adult-oriented rock just at the point when the clubby music of Happy Mondays came out and torched all that. We were two or three years out of date, although we did get to make an album in Los Angeles.’
Dare had a fight on tour and split up – so Cox, then 23, applied to Manchester University and got in.
‘Then while I was waiting for the academic year to start I joined D:Ream by accident. My friend Peter Cunnah needed someone to drive him and his DAT tape up and down the country to gigs. He got a record deal and asked me to play keyboards.’
D:Ream had a No 1 with Things Can Only Get Better in 1994, and it was a hit again three years later, after being taken up as the anthem of New Labour. Cox played keyboards at the election victory party on the South Bank.
‘Everyone was dancing. I remember all that optimism.’

Male monkeys cover themselves in their own urine to attract the ladies

It turns out male monkeys aren't taking the proverbial when it comes to their grooming habits and trying to catch a mate.Scientists believe they can finally explain a baffling habit displayed by capuchin monkeys, who urinate on their hands and then rub the urine into their fur.Male monkeys attract females by sending a message that they are single and available through rubbing urine into their fur, according to a study.

You smell lovely! A study suggests female capuchins are attracted to males who have washed themselves in their own urine There is more activity in the brains of female tufted capuchins when they are exposed to the smell of the urine of sexually mature males, researchers said.Several hypotheses for why they perform this 'urine wash' had been tested by earlier studies, but most had proved inconclusive.Possible reasons that had been put forward previously included the possibility that it somehow helped to maintain body temperature or allowed the monkeys to use the smell to identify each other.

'Female capuchin monkey brains react differently to the urine of adult males than to urine of juvenile males'

The females' brains became significantly more active when they sniffed the scent of urine produced by adult males compared to that from juveniles, according to the results, which were published in the American Journal of Primatology.It is believed that the sexually mature adult males excrete higher levels of testosterone into their urine, and the females are able to detect this through smell.Capuchin monkeys are native to Central and South America where they live with their offspring in mixed sex groups, usually headed by a dominant male.The concentration of testosterone is also linked to their social status with higher status males tending to produce more of the hormone.'Female capuchin monkey brains react differently to the urine of adult males than to urine of juvenile males,' said Dr Phillips.'We suggest that this is used as a form of communication to convey social and or sexual status.'A number of other monkey species have exhibited similar 'urine washing' behaviour, including mantled howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, urinating into the palm of the hand, then vigorously rubbing the urine into the feet and hindquarters.

'But one study reported that when being solicited by a female, adult males increased their rate of urine-washing,' said Dr Kimberley Phillips.Dr Phillips is an associate professor of psychology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, who specialises in research that focuses on understanding the neurological and biological basis of primate behaviour.Dr Phillips and her research team investigated this behaviour further, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of female capuchins.The study involved performing scans while the females were exposed to the urine of sexually mature adult males and that of juveniles.

Volvo installs pedestrian detection system that brakes S60 automatically

After decades of residential speeding campaigns, one car manufacturer has finally pulled out all the stops.Volvo has developed a pedestrian detection system that automatically brakes a car to a halt whenever someone steps out in front of it.Designed to save lives on urban streets, the 'support function' kicks in at speeds of up to 22mph, although the technology 'is active at all speeds'.

Radar sensors: Volvo has developed a pedestrian detection system that automatically brakes a car to a halt whenever someone steps out in front of it It works by using radar and camera technology to watch out for other vehicles and pedestrians ahead of the car.Should a collision be imminent, an audible warning is made to alert the driver, and if there is no response the car is immediately brought to an emergency stop.

The system doesn't work at night or in poor weather, and Volvo is quick to point out that 'it is always the driver that is responsible for driving safely'.Fourteen per cent of all those killed in car accidents in Europe are pedestrians; this figure stands at 11 per cent in the U.S.

Terminator vision: The Volvo picks up on pedestrians' movements The Swedish car manufacturer estimates that its detection system would reduce the number of pedestrians killed by more than 20 per cent, while the number of those seriously injured would fall by almost 30 per cent.In a further 30 per cent of incidents, a collision would be entirely avoided, Volvo said.The system is an optional extra in the Volvo XC60, S60 and V60.The collision warning system is also programmed to react if the vehicle in front is at a standstill or is moving in the same direction.

Wii game We Dare has been given a 12 rating despite the sexual nature of play

Add to My Stories A new ‘sexy party’ computer game has outraged parents with lurid adult content which they claim will encourage orgies and under-age sex.
The Nintendo Wii game We Dare has styled itself ‘sexy’ but has only been given a 12+ rating.
Many parents insist it is not suitable for a console which is popular with families and teenagers.   

Sexual: The trailer for We Dare shows alternative endings of lesbianism, both couples having sex or swapping partners A risque trailer promoting the game features two couples in a series of sexually suggestive situations.   
In an explicit trailer, two girls can be seen virtually kissing, the couples stripping to their underwear and spanking each other.   

The game is to be released on the Wii and Playstation 3 next month, with the promotion line ‘The more friends you invite to party, the spicier the play!’ It is described as ‘a sexy, quirky party game that offers a large variety of hilarious, innovative and physical, sometimes kinky, challenges’.   

 

Fear: The trailer for We Dare has hardly put parents' mind at rest as to what new Wii game could lead to And under the key features, producers offer the chance to ‘challenge your mates to a flirty striptease’. 
Parents have described the 12+ certificate as ‘appalling’ and ‘unbelievable’.   

Laura Pearson, 52, from Birmingham, said: ‘I have a 13-year-old daughter and if I knew she was playing such a highly charged sexual game with boys, I would be appalled.

‘It is encouraging under-age sex. The video pretty much shows them swapping partners, girl-on-girl kissing. That kind of thing is not something that young teenagers should be exposed to.
‘Nintendo Wii’s are family consoles popular among children and youngsters. This is totally inappropriate.’

 

Outrage: A risque trailer promoting the game features two couples involved in a series of sexually suggestive situations has been branded as 'highly inappropriate'George Hardy, a 46-year-old father, said: ‘No wonder we have problems in society with unsafe sex and under-age sex when kids can get hold of games like this.
‘This sort of computer game will only serve to fuel sexual tensions and, in a worse-case scenario, sexual touching or assault.

‘Imagine a room of testerone-fuelled teenagers playing this, something could get out of hand. It sounds drastic but I could see it.’

Bad decision: The Nintendo Wii game We Dare has styled itself 'sexy' but has only been given a 12+ ratingRachel Caswell, 28, who has a ten-year-old daughter Heidi, said: ‘Luckily I won’t have to worry about this for a while but to think that in just two years, my little girl could legally play this game is just unbelievable.
‘The trailer shows alternative endings of   lesbianism, both couples having sex or swapping partners. 
‘That is not appropriate for 12-year-olds to see.’

But another mother, Sandra Betts, who has a 15-year-old son, said: ‘It’s only like a modern day spin the bottle. It’s just a bit of harmless fun.’

And other parts of the two-minute video, viewed over 150,000 times on the Internet site You Tube, are suggestive of orgies, pole-dancing and wife-swapping.