What do you all think about a judge ordering a person to forfeit facebook passwords as a condition of probation? What about as a condition of bond?

I could potentially see problems if a judge orders the password forfeited as a bond condition and the pretrial department finds that they have confessed to the murder online under a password protected account.

One of our judges is considering doing this as a standard bond condition and probation condition. I can't find any case law on the issue.

Would you let the judge insert a condition of bond where the person had to turn over all of their mail to the judge to be read? Or to give up their diaries?

As a condition of probation it's perhaps a closer case, but even then I'd ask that he just prohibit the use of facebook, rather than decide to bypass that whole tricky 4th Amendment.

I know that we routinely require juvenile probationer's to provide their JPO with the passwords for Facebook and MySpace as a condition of probation.

Brody,

I totally agree. This isn't something that our office is asking for, rather something that the judge is thinking of doing on his own. I can see problems on the horizon....