Featured, National - by Josh Becker on Friday, November 20, 2009 13:58 - 10 Comments - 1,150 views

Yes, You Can Get Busted For Underage Drinking Based Off Your Facebook Photos

Just pals download.image.png” alt=”310673-6-20091119181117.image” width=”240″ height=”200″ />Well here we go: we fought the law, so the law decided to go on Facebook and browse random teenagers’ photos. The latest case in point: a 19-year-old University of Wisconsin student (that’s his profile picture, to the left, and no I don’t know which one he is specifically) accepted a friend request from a “good-looking” but unfamiliar girl. Shortly thereafter, the police contacted him and told him to come to the station, where they charged him with underage drinking. Great!

Eight students from the University of Wisconsin have now been charged with underage drinking based off Facebook photos. And you don’t even have to have uploaded the incriminating photo yourself! According to the article, “Someone else posted photos on a Facebook site of UW-L sophomores Brianna Niesen and Cassie Stenholt holding beer, but they still ended up in court Wednesday pleading no contest and getting fined.”

Is this legal? Yes. Is it ethical? Tough call. I mean, if you’re caught drinking and you’re under 21, you’re clearly breaking the law. At the same time, I’d say like three quarters of my Facebook friends (myself included) have photos—both tagged and untagged—that could similarly get us in trouble with the law. And I don’t feel good about that; it’s not a great feeling to know that yes, it’s possible that a cop is looking at that picture of you downing shots in your friend’s room while pregaming.

Also, if you’re a schoolteacher and your Facebook profile has pictures of (legally) drinking, you can still be forced to resign. The line between responsible monitoring and 1984-esque spying is blurry for sure, but I have hope that when our generation rules the world in a couple decades, stuff like this won’t be a problem because, come on, our president will probably have pictures online of him (or her!) downing a beer and goofily smiling into the camera, just like the rest of us.

Picture courtesy Newser

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10 Comments

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Sterling Yee
Nov 20, 2009 14:24

really? even if the alcohol is in cups like the image above?

Josh Becker
Nov 20, 2009 14:38

Good question. My guess is that it’s illegal based of an image like the one above, but a suspicious policeman will browse other photos and find something.

Perry K
Nov 20, 2009 14:56

Doesn’t anyone want to know who’s photo they used, whether they stole it from Google images or FaceBook, and whether the “good-looking girl” in it is aware that her image is being used by undercover cops?

Josh Becker
Nov 20, 2009 15:18

Yes! Yes, I would like to know that.

Matt Campbell
Nov 20, 2009 17:13

while this practice does seem like a waste of police department resources, I don’t think that posting pictures online of yourself and your friends breaking the law & then being surprised when other people see them counts as 1984-esque spying. aren’t we supposed to be the technologically-literate generation?

@Perry K Why would you assume that the picture isn’t of a young female cop?

Perry K
Nov 20, 2009 17:36

I would hope that it is, but I would also not be at all surprised, given the general lackadaisical attitude toward usage of found images on the internet, that the police department in question just googled “cute girl” or stole one from a facebook page. The photography seems like a very important part of the bust, as the student indicated he wouldn’t normally have accepted the friend request. That just made me wish the original article had been more detailed on the matter.

Max Meyers
Nov 20, 2009 18:20

This sucks. Go fight real crime, cops.

Henry Chan
Nov 21, 2009 8:03

Tip: Do not accept friend requests of people you don’t know. Even if they’re cute.

NYPD Preventing Gang Violence, One Tweet at a Time | NYU Local
Dec 1, 2009 11:30

[...] remember how the cops are using Facebook to nab teenagers for underage drinking? Well they’re not done playing in the hellish rodeo [...]

NYU Local Takes Over Fox News | NYU Local
Dec 14, 2009 11:54

[...] Pulos appeared on Fox and Friends a few weeks ago to play devil’s advocate to Josh’s post on cops and Facebook. Check out the clip above. [...]

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