law

Kids post Facebook pics of themselves burglarizing house

It's hard to know where to hold a party these days. Big venues are expensive. Small ones might even have a cover charge. And then there's all the legal responsibility.

Perhaps that's why some kids in Tega Cay, S.C., decided that it might be more, um, cost-effective to break into someone else's house and have the party there.

According to NBC Charlotte, the owners of the house were none the wiser. For they were out of town when the party allegedly happened. And when they returned they noticed nothing especially amiss.

That was, until their eyes were directed to some pictures on Facebook. Gosh, that house looked familiar. For indeed, it appears that pictures from the break-in party had been posted by the alleged miscreants. … Read more

Oops. Man mistakenly sexts entire contact list, lands in jail

The thumping excitement that surrounds sexting can sometimes suppress the hardheaded need for focusing.

Evidence of this comes from the torrid tale of Craig Evans.

Evans is a 24-year-old swimming teacher from my own hometown of Birmingham, England.

As the Daily Mail tells it -- and an appeals court heard it -- Evans was rather keen to engage a lover in "skin to skin" activities. He also wondered whether she would prefer it "fast or slow."

His chosen method of communicating this wasn't a whisper in the ear, nor a love letter sent by mail.

No, he whipped out his BlackBerry, a whipping-out that resulted in him being sentenced to jail.… Read more

Calif. law passed to halt employer snooping on social media

Calif. Gov. Jerry Brown took to social media today to announce that he signed two privacy laws protecting employees and students from bosses and universities wanting to snoop on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media accounts.

"Today I am signing Assembly Bill 1844 and Senate Bill 1349, which prohibit universities and employers from demanding your email and social media passwords," he wrote in a Facebook post. "California pioneered the social media revolution. These laws protect Californians from unwarranted invasions of their social media accounts."

AB 1844 was designed to prohibit employers from requiring an employee or … Read more

A crazy iPad theft witnessed by '50,000'

When it comes to iPads, there seems little sense of proportion.

Some heads are still spinning after an iPad got swiped in San Francisco yesterday, and the alleged thieves then went on a rampage in order, it seems, merely to get away.

The way the San Francisco Chronicle tells it, the suspects took a backpack containing the iPad from a woman walking along the street.

They made one tiny mistake. At least initially.

"We had 50,000 witnesses who saw it and called," Capt. Ann Mannix of the San Francisco Police Department told the Chronicle.

Yes, it's … Read more

Man straps self with wires and gadgets, surprised to be arrested

People like to make statements about themselves.

Sometimes, they use words. Sometimes they dress themselves in a manner that, well, says something.

So if you saw a man with wires and gadgets strapped all over him, what statement do you think he'd be making? That he's a cool, original, quirky, gadgety dude? Or that he's about to wander into the local movie theater and bomb the place?

This was the dilemma faced by ordinary mortals in the Discover Mills Mall in Gwinnett County, Ga.

As WSB-TV describes it, 30-year-old Daniel Tudela wandered into the mall and headed … Read more

Facebooker jailed for LOL car crash post

I was twice almost killed on the road today.

Yes, it's a slight exaggeration. Yet, two different cars, at two different moments, tried to run me off the road. It was as if I had stumbled upon an episode of a Bourne movie in which I didn't know I'd been cast.

I was tempted to joke about it on Twitter. (I wondered whether it was a confederacy of dunces or a confederacy of exes.) But only because nothing was damaged, other than my brittle psyche.

However, had I got drunk and smashed into another car, disturbing its … Read more

Skyping with the police

The cops are getting their geek on. Four days a week, a police officer ducks into the social media room at the Redwood City Police Department, launches a video chat application and stands by waiting for your call, just like those Time Life Books operators.

Located smack in the middle of the Valley, the police department is the first in the country to offer video chat on its Web site. Police Chief J.R. Gamez was clearly peacock-proud when we asked about his organization's tech know-how. The police department tweets city alerts to followers and posts updates on Facebook. … Read more

Thief drives straight through Apple Store window

Perhaps he thought the iPhone 5 would already be there.

Who can imagine why someone would risk the sensitive fenders of his BMW to drive straight through the front window of the Apple Store in Temecula, Calif.?

And yet here is footage of a smash, a grab, and a slight thoughtlessness, given that the robbers seemed not to have factored in the security cameras.

Footage that was release to YouTube shows action that seems as incontrovertible as it is rather tragic.

I am grateful to the BBC for grabbing this footage and smashing it into my eyes.

Some will be … Read more

The sad revenge of Kinki restaurateur after bad online reviews

People know how to upset people.

These days, perhaps the most natural method is to reach for one's laptop and say bad things about those people to all the world.

It is quite some power, one that was exercised to its fullest by one in Ottawa against another.

The first, Elayna Katz, posted two unhappy reviews of the Mambo Nuevo Latino restaurant. The Mambo's owner, Marisol Simoes, didn't react in an entirely sanguine manner.

As the Daily Mail tells it, Simoes decided to publicly besmirch Katz's sexual proclivities.

Why she went this route many might speculate. … Read more