Count ‘Alibi Provider’ Among Facebook’s Many Tools

Since they began, social-networking sites have had many collisions with law enforcement.

MySpace especially was considered the stomping ground of child predators. The case of the ‘MySpace Mom‘ who was prosecuted (and ultimately acquitted) for creating a fake profile and using it to taunt a neighborhood girl who eventually committed suicide was a scary example of how the sites could be used for sinister purposes. More recently, a Facebook poll about whether Obama should be assassinated prompted a Secret Service investigation.

But according to the New York Times, a case in Harlem recently marked the first time Facebook has been used to provide an alibi for a suspect of a crime. Rodney Bradford was arrested in connection with a robbery. But when he told the police about a Facebook status update he’d written – “Where’s my pancakes” – from his father’s apartment at the time the crime was committed, the district attorney verified the post and where it was written, and dropped the charges.

It only stands to reason that the street runs both ways when it comes to online tools like Facebook. They do create an online record of a person’s whereabouts and activities, even when they’re just being used as a form of navel-gazing, like in Bradford’s case.

It’s nice to know that while your online activities have the potential to land you in hot water, they also have the capacity to get you out of it.