Castillo and Phaknikone: Let the Social Network Evidence Begin .

Say you put a crime. Let`s say the offence involves illegal possession of a firearm. Say that in the past you have posted information on Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or Flicker or YouTube or any other social network or Internet site. Say your posts included a picture on MySpace of you wear a ski mask; holding a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle; making, umm, expletives; threatening your ex-wife;

and, to say it as a tribunal would say it, "displaying" your middle finger.

Say your ex-mother-in-law tells the law about your MySpace photo, and you get broken and prosecuted for federal firearms offenses. Can the MySpace photos and information, including you and your assault rifle and feel and threats, be admitted as manifest in the suit against you?

Yes, says the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last week in one of the first appellate opinions on the admissibility of evidence from social networks. United States v. Castillo.

Don`t care about challenging the genuineness of the photo. That was such a long shot in Castillo that authenticity was not yet raised on appeal.

How about arguing that the likelihood that the incendiary and damaging impact of the picture outweighs its probative value? And that the photo is not even relevant because the AR-15 in the photo is not the piece that you are charged with possessing illegally? The Castillo court held that the trial court was justified in allowing the panel to take the picture with an instruction to the panel to dismiss the thumb and threats. The tribunal ruled that ownership of any "assault rifle" - even a gun other than the gun involved - was relevant to the offence charged.

Or drive a different case. Say you rob a lot of banks, and at your criminal trial your MySpace profile page and account information and photographs from your MySpace are offered as evidence. One of the photos shows you holding a handgun. You get caught and prosecuted for bank robbery and weapons charges, and the prosecution offers the MySpace information as evidence. Under these circumstances, in a subject that the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review yesterday, the trial court admitted the MySpace information as evidence. Though the 11th Circuit held that the MySpace evidence was inadmissible character evidence, the sentence was confirmed because of other overwhelming evidence. U.S. v. Phaknikone.

The messages of Castillo and Phaknikone are both gain and apparently contrary to what most users of social networks believe: you should strike that anything you carry on a social network site will be observed and admitted in any litigation, civil or criminal, in which you get involved.