Who's the bad guy in social media - Government versus Citizen

We often hear complaints about the government trying to track are every move. We also hear complaints about “big brother” invading our privacy and stepping on our rights. These complaints stemmed from known issues such as the government tapping our phones and hiding hidden cameras on certain neighborhood streets. Now, people are complaining about the government doing the same thing trough the medium of Social Media. There have been countless conspiracy theories of how the social media sites are used by the government to see who is connected to whom so that they can track people and find out with whom those people associate with. However, this particular article points out that it is not always the government doing the spying and prying, but it is oft times the citizens.

In this article the author discussed how social media has helped to cause a in the fabric of our society. People worry that social media is beginning to make families and individuals un-social. People according to the article implications are spending more time instant messaging and tweeting than they are having face to face communication with one another. Some also use the social Media to take the law into their own hands. The Vancouver Vigilante started finding people that were part of the June 15th riot that occurred after the Boston Bruins game on his own. He then posted video of them on his social media pages to help speed up the prosecution. The catch is though is that the people that he was posted on his page are people that were bragging about turning over cars and looting. One of the problems with that is that minors, teenagers and innocent bi-standards are in those videos as well. It could be a security or safety issues. Not to mention, it would scare some people from testifying in court if needed.

The question was is this fair use of social media? Furthermore, is this legal use of social media? Well, the courts deemed that it was legal. The video was of public streets and people just happened to be doing their things in those public streets. It was not necessarily of the people. Also, there are laws against recording private conversations of people without permission. There are not laws in that area preventing places of public domain where privacy is not expected from being recorded. Nevertheless, with citizens taking the law into their own hands, a question is posed. Is it really the government that are acting as the invaders of our privacy with social media or is it us the citizens?

http://www.tallahassee.com/article/20110713/COLUMNIST04/107130309/Gerald-Ensley-vigilante-finds-new-home-online?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE