Ross Graber Consulting

There’s an emerging debate between computer forensic technicians and private investigators.

The question is what constitutes an expert witness, and what evidence is admissible in court. State PI associations are lobbying to require a PI license to perform computer forensics for hire, and thus to present in court. Others argue that a forensic technician is no different than a forensic accountant, or forensic anthropologist; they are lab technicians and do not lead the investigation.

Legislation has been floated in South Carolina and other states.

Who owns the data associated with a user’s account within an online service?

The answer isn’t simple. For example, email has a different status than an address book. In the case of a social network derived from an address book, the social graph is viewed by the business as a compilation of data with a unique arrangement, and therefore copyrightable.

However, many consumers don’t understand or fully agree with this data grab. Facebook was at the center of a recent scandal. A user wrote a script to pull our his social graph information. A FB script noticed the TOS violation and banned him. However, consumer groups are forming lobbying groups to advocate for more user rights in “data portability“.

There are startups developing “Social Network Aggregators”, and those were recently proposed as the 2008 killer app. The Open vs Closed debate will continue moving to center stage this year.

The spammers come to Facebook; there’s a highly viral applet that utilizes social engineering to spread spyware. My 2008 prediction: 20+ hot girls a day asking to be our “friend” on FB as with MySpace (to spread spam). A new social network emerges with a limited audience and the trendsetters start to abandon FB. Wash, Rinse, Repeat.