A former St. Louis police officer has filed a suit in Madison (Ill.) County Circuit Court in Edwardsville (just across the river from St. Louis) to force Facebook to release information about 23 Facebook users who are investigating or might have witnessed a shooting at a bar in November 2008. Bryan Pour, the officer who was off-duty at the time of the shooting, was fired by St. Louis police after he shot at a man at a bar. The lawyer for the officer was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying, "We believe law enforcement had pre-existing and subsequent relationships with material witnesses" that will show up on Facebook accounts.
Facebook spokesmen have said that company policy prohibits them from commenting on individual Facebook user accounts. Facebook lawyers have said in the past that the social network is prohibited by federal law from disclosing information. Facebook contends that defendants' requests for Facebook information are "hopelessly overbroad and vague."
I'm sure that Facebook gets these requests in tons of legal cases, and obviously, not all can be granted. In most cases, I don't think these requests should be granted. Each case should be judged on its merit. Perhaps in a murder case, the information might be released. In a bar shooting when no one was killed, no.
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