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High schoolers are increasingly aware that those embarrassing Facebook posts or tweets could cost them a shot at getting into their dream college.

The test prep company Kaplan found that only 16 percent of the 403 colleges surveyed found anything troubling in the social media posts they viewed -- a drop from 50 percent a year ago. That decline comes as the survey found more colleges are factoring social media into the application process: 35 percent in the latest survey compared to only 9 percent six years ago.

Wes Waggoner, the dean of admissions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, acknowledged he has seen cases where social media posts resulted in a rejection letter. But he said students now have a greater appreciation of the damage that a wild party shot can do.

"Students are aware that what they say on social media has an impact on something that's important to them," Waggoner told Adriana Diaz of CBS News.

"As social media has evolved from early versions of MySpace and Facebook to a broad ecosystem of platforms and apps that are a daily part of millions of people's lives worldwide, we're seeing greater acceptance of social media use in the college admissions process," Christine Brown, executive director of K12 and college prep programs for Kaplan Test Prep, said in a statement. "This means admissions officers are increasingly open to what they once viewed as a dubious practice, while teens have come to terms with the fact that their digital trails are for the most part easily searchable, followable and sometimes judged."

In a separate survey of 500 high school students, Kaplan found that 58 percent of students describe their social networking pages as "fair game" for admissions officers. And rather than fearing what a college might see, 35 percent said they felt it could actually help their chances of admission -- with 18 percent seeing social media as a savvy way to promote themselves.

Still, Kaplan said social media still plays only a "peripheral role" in the process and that grades and test scores are the main factors being considered by colleges.

"The majority of admissions officers are not looking at Facebook for applicant information, and even those who are typically do so as an anomaly -- because they were flagged, either positively or negatively, to particular applicants," Brown said. "Admissions chances are still overwhelmingly decided by the traditional factors of high school GPA, standardized test scores, letters of recommendation, personal essays and extracurricular activities. Applicants' online personas are really a wild card in the admissions process."

Don't tell that to Neha Husein, a Hebron High School senior who has applied to 10 colleges including SMU. She acknowledged that she thinks twice before posting anything.

"One wrong tweet can go viral in seconds," Husein said. "You can never ever be too careful, especially when it comes to college and the rest of your life."

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High schoolers wise up about social media when applying for colleges

Nextdoor.com, a for-profit social-networking site, and the Nutter administration announced a partnership Thursday that will enable the city to communicate directly with Nextdoor's 17,000 local users.

It will allow the city to more narrowly focus its online interactions with residents who belong to the online network.

The Streets Department, for example, will be able to send a notification of a street closing to residents in the affected neighborhoods.

"This offers us a cost-effective method to communicate with residents in a targeted way," Managing Director Rich Negrin said. "It is a powerful tool to target specific messages to specific neighborhoods."

The city's partnership, which gives Nextdoor users unique access to communications from city departments, will increase Nextdoor's value by enabling it to attract more residents to its site.

The city will receive no payment in return.

"It adds value for our citizens," Negrin said. "This enables them to have greater access to services. We think that is enough."

Nextdoor.com is an online social-networking site much like Facebook but targeted to neighborhoods. Individual neighborhood sites are free to anyone who can verify that he or she is an area resident.

Members can use the site to communicate with one another, engage in local online forums, discuss neighborhood issues, and seek recommendations from neighbors for babysitters, contractors, and other services.

See the article here:
Nutter: City and Nextdoor.com to partner free for social networking

San Jose, CA (PRWEB) December 19, 2014

BlackStar Technologies has released its Universal Social Networking Mobile application, Bablr to one of the largest smartphone user markets in the world, China.

The Company has entered into a joint development with a Chinese based technology and marketing group to develop and market a Chinese language version of Bablr its mobile universal social-networking platform.

Founder, Ted Flowers said, "We cannot ignore the growing power of the Chinese consumer market and their desire to communicate and be connected to the world via social networking."

Mr. Flowers believes that as the China market adopts Bablr it will surpass both Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in users because its an inclusive platform that integrates multiple social networking streams, versus isolated mobile networks offered by Facebook and others.

"Integration and convergence of platforms is the trend in computer technologies, Microsofts Windows 8 platform integrates its operating platform systems with news and market applications, while Bablr does it with social networks on its mobile app," said Flowers.

The Bablr. application was developed with intent of converging messaging, chatting, posting and group interaction into one easy to use platform Bablr enables users to post, message and interact across multiple social social feeds including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram simultaneously. The Bablr app when ready will also include popular Chinese social media streams in the Chinese market version.

The company is currently running a crowdfunding campaign and private placement to finish the commercial ready release version of Bablr.mobi by Second Quarter 2015.

Join the Social Networking Evolution, Revolution and support the new future of Social Networking with Bablr.mobi.

More information about the campaign is available at http://igg.me/at/bablr-mobile-app The official website of Bablr is http://www.bablr.mobi/

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Bablr challenges Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin in 2015.

by John Wesley Hall Criminal Defense Lawyer and Fourth Amendment consultant Little Rock, Arkansas Contact / The Book Search and seizure law consulting http://www.johnwesleyhall.com

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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links

Latest Slip Opinions: U.S. Supreme Court (Home) Federal Appellate Courts Opinions First Circuit Second Circuit Third Circuit Fourth Circuit Fifth Circuit Sixth Circuit Seventh Circuit Eighth Circuit Ninth Circuit Tenth Circuit Eleventh Circuit D.C. Circuit Foreign Intell.Surv.Ct. FDsys, many district courts, other federal courts, other Military Courts: C.A.A.F., Army, AF, N-M, CG State courts (and some USDC opinions)

Google Scholar Advanced Google Scholar Google search tips LexisWeb LII State Appellate Courts LexisONE free caselaw Findlaw Free Opinions To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $

Research Links: Supreme Court: SCOTUSBlog S. Ct. Docket Solicitor General's site SCOTUSreport Briefs online (but no amicus briefs) Curiae (Yale Law) Oyez Project (NWU) "On the Docket"Medill S.Ct. Monitor: Law.com S.Ct. Com't'ry: Law.com

General (many free): LexisWeb Google Scholar | Google LexisOne Legal Website Directory Crimelynx Lexis.com $ Lexis.com (criminal law/ 4th Amd) $ Findlaw.com Findlaw.com (4th Amd) Westlaw.com $ F.R.Crim.P. 41 http://www.fd.org FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (2008) (pdf) DEA Agents Manual (2002) (download) DOJ Computer Search Manual (2009) (pdf)

Congressional Research Service: Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012) Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012) Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012) Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012) Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions (2012) ACLU on privacy Privacy Foundation Electronic Frontier Foundation NACDLs Domestic Drone Information Center Electronic Privacy Information Center Criminal Appeal (post-conviction) (9th Cir.) Section 1983 Blog

"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." Me

"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government." Shemaya, in the Thalmud

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Fourth Amendment

Regular readers will recall the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment introduced by the DC Circuit in United States v. Maynard, by which law enforcement steps that arent searches in isolation can become searches when aggregated over time. For the most part, judges have been pretty skeptical of the mosaic theory. For example, in the recent oral argument in the Fourth Circuit in United States v. Graham, on whether the Fourth Amendment protects historical cell-site data, the mosaic arguments didnt gain a lot of traction for the defense.

In this post, however, I want to focus on two recent federal district court decisions that cut against this trend and adopted the mosaic theory. The first case is United States v. White (E.D.Mich. Nov. 24, 2014) (Lawson, J.), which held that the Fourth Amendment was violated when the government obtained a warrant to track a drug dealers cell phone continuously over 30 days. The second case is United States v. Vargas (W.D.Wash. Dec. 15, 2014) (Shea, J.), which suppressed video evidence from a camera set up on a public utility pole 100 yards away from the targets rural house that showed what was happening on the targets front lawn continuously for six weeks.

1. United States v. White

In United States v. White, agents were conducting a wide-scale investigation into a known narcotics trafficker, Jimmie White. Agents obtained two search warrants to track Whites cell phone in real time for 30 days each, with the goal of understanding the scope of Whites activities and to show his involvement in narcotics crimes. When charges were brought, White moved to suppress the location information obtained from the cell phone location warrants. The case was heard before Judge David Lawson (who, allow me to add, I have had the pleasure of working with on the Criminal Rules Committee). Judge Lawson recognized that the Sixth Circuit had held in United States v. Skinner that monitoring a suspects cell phone location in real-time was not a Fourth Amendment search. But Judge Lawson held that the facts of Whites case were distinguishable:

[T]he surveillance in this case took place over an extended time period continuously for 30 days on two (or three) separate occasions and followed White into both public and private spaces. Justice Alitos concurring opinion in Jones, which drew support from a fifth justice, see Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 954-57 (Sotomayor, J., concurring), suggested that the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy. Id. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring). The 4-week tracking in that case was well over the line of reasonableness, in his view. Ibid. (We need not identify with precision the point at which the tracking of this vehicle became a search, for the line was surely crossed before the 4-week mark.). And the Skinner majority acknowledged Justice Alitos concerns, allowing that [t]here may be situations where police, using otherwise legal methods, so comprehensively track a persons activities that the very comprehensiveness of the tracking is unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes. Skinner, 690 F.3d at 780. Skinner does not control the present case, because the length and breadth of the tracking here extends well beyond what any reasonable person might anticipate.

Judge Lawson then offered three reasons why 30 days of monitoring Whites cell phone location violated his reasonable expectation of privacy. First, it included Whites location when he was at home. Second, Congress has enacted statutory privacy protections for cell-site location. And third, 30 days of monitoring allows the government to obtain a detailed picture of a persons life. As a result, it is safe to say that society would recognize that an interest in keeping these movements private is reasonable.

Judge Lawson recognized that his approach raised a difficult question of line-drawing: How long is long enough for monitoring to constitute a search? He answers:

[C]ourts have confronted similar problems in the past. For instance, how long may law enforcement detain property waiting for a drug detection dog to arrive for a sniff before the intrusion matures into a seizure? To find an answer, courts must balance the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individuals Fourth Amendment interests against the importance of the governmental interests alleged to justify the intrusion. United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 703 (1983).

Under that rationale, it may be appropriate to track an individual for a short time on public streets based on a level of suspicion that is less than probable cause. See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 22 (1968) . . . Longer surveillances may require more justification, and a case might be made that the governments reasons underlying the need for tracking in the case of domestic terrorism, for example may call for less. The present case involves a garden-variety drug trafficking crime, nothing more. The blanket surveillance of an individual for thirty days at a time cannot equate to a brief detention, however. The nature and quality of an intrusion of that magnitude (in excess of the the 4-week mark) tips the balance in favor of the individual; it constitutes a breach of ones reasonable expectation of privacy that requires the state to demonstrate probable cause as a justification for the intrusion. Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 964 (Alito, J., concurring).

This passage is interesting because it relies on caselaw concerning reasonableness, not what is a search. If I understand Judge Lawson correctly, he would say that even short-term monitoring on public streets is a search, but one that may be allowed based on only the Terry standard, at least depending on the crime under investigation. Here Judge Lawson goes significantly beyond Justice Alitos Jones concurrence, which had adhered to Knotts and indicated that short-term location monitoring is not a search at all.

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Volokh Conspiracy: Two district courts adopt the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment