mashable.com
20-year-old Erika Scoliere of Campton Hills, Illinois has been awaiting trial for reckless homicide and aggravated DUI since she was allegedly involved in a July 2007 crash that killed a motorcyclist. Now, thanks to being reckless on Facebook(and, some would argue, continued poor offline judgment), the rest of her time spent awaiting trial is about to get a whole lot more restrictive.
As a condition of her bail following the 2007 incident, Scoliere was ordered by a judge not to consume alcohol or be around people consuming alcohol — meaning no parties or visits to the bar (readers will notice that Scoliere isn’t of legal drinking age in the United States, so none of that should have been very difficult). But Scoliere found herself back in court this week after police found recent photos of her on Facebook drinking with college buddies in Ohio, where she goes to school.
“It appears the defendant is having a grand old time drinking tequila,” said Judge Thomas Mueller, during a hearing on Wednesday, reports the Chicago Tribune, before ordering Scoliere to wear an ankle monitoring device that can detect alcohol via perspiration and alert authorities if she violates bail again. She will have to pay the county $15 per day to wear the ankle bracelet.
While it is hard to feel bad for Scoliere since her actions allegedly led to the death of an innocent motorist, the case also highlights a lesson that more people are starting to learn: you have to be careful what you share on social networks. We’ve heard plenty of reports before that Facebook can get you dumped, get you fired, and even can get you evicted.
But Facebook and other social networks are also being used by law enforcement to track down and keep tabs on criminals and alleged law breakers. This isn’t the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. On one level, law enforcement peeping in on our social network profiles does have a certain “Big Brother” feel to it, but on another, when the result is potentially curbing drunk driving fatalities, it is hard to argue against. And of course, anything you make public on the Internet is fair game for anyone to look at, and that’s something people have to be aware of.
