A California judge has shut down a U.K. couple’s attempt to obtain the Facebook messages of their daughter, a 23-year-old model who died in a mysterious tragedy. The judge’s decision highlights, once again, growing questions over privacy and how to handle social media after we die.
The California case turns on Sahar Daftary, a former “Face of Asia” winner, who fell 150 feet from the balcony of a luxury apartment in Manchester. Her parents had asked Facebook for her messages in the hopes they would shed light about how and why she died. But in his ruling last week, Judge Paul Grewal quashed the request after Facebook argued that turning over the messages could violate federal privacy laws.
Daftary’s mother had argued that, as the executor of her daughter’s will, she had a right to access Sahar’s Facebook account. But Facebook pointed to a law called the Stored Communications Act that forbids companies from sharing users’ emails without their permission. The judge sided with Facebook.
Both sides have a point here. On one hand, family members may want to learn more about a loved one’s last days. But on the other, Facebook is right to worry about privacy laws. Facebook and other companies are probably also keen to avoid getting caught in the middle of a fight between relatives (or, worse, insurance companies) over a dead person’s profile.
Finally, there is the issue of what the dead person themselves would have wanted. As social media lawyers Venkat Balasubramani and Eric Goldman point out, what if the departed want to take their Facebook secrets to the grave?
The situation is complicated because state laws drafted in an era of physical things have not evolved to account for our digital lives. This creates problem that extends both to social media and to digital property like iTunes.
For now, individuals who want their families to have access one day to their Facebook accounts still have options: put the password in your will or give it to someone you really, really trust.
(Image by simonalvinge via Shutterstock)
