by Jonathan Arogeti
Envision OpenPlanet, a hypothetical program that could patch together every surveillance camera in the world and pair it with Facebook’s facial recognition software to create a perpetual video 
timeline database for each Facebook user. Would this violate the Fourth Amendment as an unreasonable search and seizure?
This question, posed by George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen, represents the crux of the issue explored at a recent forum at American University Washington College of Law titled, “Social Technology and the Threat to Privacy: How Facebook, GPS & Google Are Changing Our Lives.” Click here for video.
Rosen links this question to the 2006 firing of Stacy Snyder, a Pennsylvania woman who was allegedly fired from her teacher training program after a MySpace picture showed her wearing a pirate hat and drinking from a plastic cup with the caption “Drunken Pirate.” Snyder sued in federal court that the picture was protected speech, but the judge disagreed because it “didn’t relate to matters of public concern.”
Rosen points to law and technology as mechanisms for dealing with this “Stacy Snyder problem.” Europeans are experimenting with le droit a l’oubli, or the right to oblivion, as a mechanism to force online companies to protect the privacy of its customers. Technology, too, can secure customer privacy, and he points to a company that erases text messages after a specific period of time designated by the user.