I've had many cases in my career where blog posts or emails have come into play. During a recent case, one of the players cried, "those are private."

But here's the thing: Are they? Do you really have a right to privacy on the internet? Is it reasonable to expect that you do?

I don't think so. Sure police need a warrant to search your house and seize your computer and then search the computer but that's not what I'm talking about here. Once you post something on the internet, it's out there. It's available for any clever hacker to find - even if you lock it or mark it private or {insert whatever term your blog uses here}.

United States v. Charbonneau, 979 F. Supp. 1177, 1184 (S.D. Ohio 1997) (holding that defendant does not retain reasonable expectation of privacy in contents of e-mail message sent to America Online chat room after the message has been received by chat room participants) (Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 302 (1966))

You no longer control that content. You can't stop someone from forwarding a copy of something you've written to someone else...anyone else, even the police. It doesn't matter what it is. If you've locked a post, it's still out there for certain people to see and that means it's no longer private and that person can show anyone. It's not reasonable to believe anything else. And it seems the law agrees with me, "An important line of Supreme Court cases states that individuals generally cannot reasonably expect to retain control over mere information revealed to third parties, even if the senders have a subjective expectation that the third parties will keep the information confidential".

Now, I'm sure someone out there will say, but Bunny, we're not talking the law, we're talking netetiquette. Of course we are, but is it really reasonable to believe that your shared content should remain restricted? Of course not. Once A posts it and B reads it and wants to share it with C who doesn't know A, well I'm afraid the cat is out of the bag.