In what may be the first instance of Sherlock Holmes meets Social Networking, New Zealand police are reporting that they have taken a man into custody after placing video footage of him breaking into a Queenstown business on the popular site Facebook.

A security camera located in the back of a bar caught the man’s face when he removed his balaclava, ostensibly because it was very hot in the small room where the safe he was attempting to crack was located.

The bar’s assistant manager, Mel Kelly, had this to say: “The room is really small and it gets really hot in there at the best of times.”

Queenstown police posted the video from the security cameras onto Facebook, and in a very short time the members of the site identified him. This is the first instance local police in Queenstown have used Facebook to solve a crime and affect an arrest.

“He was identified from members of the public viewing him on Facebook, and also seeing him on TV after the Facebook images were displayed on the news,” Constable Sean Drader said. Drader added that it was unusual to obtain footage of a burglar in action. “He can’t be too experienced because he’s pretty young.”

We’ve written about the dangers of inappropriate MySpace use on the Reputation.com Blog in the past, but it seems to be a recurring theme in the Internet Age.  Recently, the New York Times picked up a Reuter’s article describing a study published by Dr. Dimitri Christakis, of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and Dr. Megan Moreno, of the University of Wisconsin. The study measured 500 randomly chosen MySpace profiles for 18-year olds.

From the article:

Overall, 54 percent of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 percent mentioned substance abuse, 24 percent sexual behavior and 14 percent violence.

Christakis said many teens are unaware of how public and permanent Internet information can be, while parents often do not know what their kids are up to.

“No one says, “Whoa! Why are you putting that up there?’” Christakis said.

This echos a sentiment that Reputation.com has been promoting for sometime. Publishing information on the Internet is like getting a tattoo. If you don’t think you’ll be comfortable with something you posted today 5, 10, or 20 years from now, you should think twice about posting it. Unfortunately, this kind of long-term thinking isn’t often employed by teens without someone else prompting them.

This can be observed most easily in the second study conducted by the doctors. In this study, 190 profiles were selected for demonstrating multiple high risk behaviors. Half of them received a message from “Dr. Meg” warning about the potential damage of posting too much information on MySpace. The other half was left alone.

From the article:

Three months after this single message, many of the young people had withdrawn references to sex and substance abuse and tightened security controls.

“It really provides the opportunity to reach millions of potential at-risk teens and try to modify their behaviors or at least prevent them from disclosing them to the entire world,” Christakis said in a telephone interview.

The e-mail was most effective at curtailing references to sex, with 13.7 percent of profiles in the group that received the warning deleting all references, compared with 5.3 percent of those who were not sent the message.

In other words, the study shows that the most effective steps in combating Internet risk are proactive. Parents should talk to their kids about responsible Internet use early and often, before they begin using social networking sites. While this might put parents in uncomfortable territory, particularly if they’re unfamiliar with Internet technologies, in the post-privacy age, there’s few alternative options.

Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik recently appeared on The Early Show to discuss Online Reputation Management and Reputation.com. Quoting from the web write up:

Michael Fertik, founder of Reputation.com, had some advice on The Early Show Saturday Edition.

Fertik says he started the business two years ago with one person. He now has 60 employees. His service costs about $10 a month.

Fertik told substitute co-anchor Seth Doane that safeguarding your online reputation is “as important as your credit score nowadays. Every life transaction that you have, whether you’re looking for a job, you’re looking for romance, you’re looking for a friend – people are gonna look you up on the Web and make conclusions based on what they find.

“One random, idiosyncratic piece of content about you on the Web could dominate your Google results forever,” he said. “It’s such an issue: It affects people who are undeserving, people who are sort of using bad judgment, all kinds of different people.”

What’s worse, legal recourse is murky at best, Fertik observed, saying, “The law hasn’t caught up yet with privacy. The Internet has really changed the privacy landscape in a big way and the law hasn’t yet caught up with it. It’s lagging behind, so far.”

Fertik stressed that, “You have to be on top of your (online) reputation. It’s not about narcissism. It’s about your personal brand. Especially in a down economy, people are looking you up, they’re making decisions. They’re denying you a job unless they find something really good about you on the Web.”

He had three key pieces of advice:

First, never let anyone set up your reputation online. Establish yourself online to create a clear and positive image of you. Don’t wait for someone else to destroy it. Use what he calls “Google insurance”: Create a profile on something like Facebook that’s positive and tasteful. Claim the real estate on your name. What is said about you on the Web isn’t a function of you living a righteous life: Anyone can say something bad about you. “Write your own history,” he recommended.

Second, if there’s a problem with your online reputation, you have to find it. Constantly monitor the Web. Search for full names, usernames, etc. Be on top of the game. Go deep into the Internet to Web sites that aren’t indexed by Google: “The deep Web – Facebook, MySpace, the pages where the content really starts to generate and become problematic.”

“Monitor yourself assiduously,” Fertik told Doane.

Third: The longer it’s there, the more it spreads and can be archived. If you see a problem, deal with it quickly. Get in touch with people and tell them to stop, in a kind and thoughtful way, without getting a lawyer involved right away. Reach them on a human level. If you want professional help, companies such as Reputation.com are available. As Fertik told Doane, “Nip it in the bud before it spreads and gets mirrored and replicated. If you can’t do it, you want to hire the pros.”

The professionals at Reputation.com offer a variety of products and services to help individuals manage their online identity.

After experiencing some good chiropractic work but some bad insurance billing at a Valencia Street chiropractic office, a local San Francisco resident decided to venture onto Yelp and share his experiences. This is nothing remarkable in and of itself, as that is what Yelp is designed for, and that’s what users do. The story takes a turn, however, when the chiropractor sees the negative review and decides to file a lawsuit for libel and invasion of privacy.

Now that the case has garnered attention from local media people are starting to think about review sites and the limits of free speech associated with them. The chiropractor in question has claimed that he’s not looking for publicity, and that he tried for over a year to settle the dispute amicably. He is quoted as saying “I am a proponent of free speech, but at the same time, individuals have a responsibility when they publish something as to the accuracy of it.”

In his original review the Yelper wrote, “I don’t think good business means charging people whatever you feel like hoping they’ll pay without a fuss.” Which, in turn caused the chiropractor to contact the Yelper saying that he was “saddened” by the review and would he reconsider or remove the review. The chiropractor maintains that he did not do anything unethical or illegal throughout the dealings.

At the heart of the matter is the issue of the Internet and expression of negative sentiments. Beyond that, it calls into question the entire viability of an industry of sites like Yelp and eBay that utilize such technology in their businesses. It is worth noting in this instance that Yelp – under the federal Communications Decency Act – is not responsible for the content it publishes.

The case has invited many prominent legal minds to weigh in, like Aaron Morris, a partner with Morris & Stone LLP in Orange County who is not involved in the case. “Sites that are seemingly well intended are turning into wastelands of defamatory and unspecified allegations. There needs to be some sort of blowback against unfettered speech. People should be able to go on and say, ‘That’s not a true statement about me, and I need to be able to attack this.’ ”

The chiropractor claims, through his attorney Eric Nordskog of San Francisco, that the review hurt his business. “Although negative reviews are fine, there are certain statements that are false statements of fact,” he said. “He accuses [my client] of dishonesty and of committing insurance fraud, which is a crime in California.”

For his part, the Yelper’s attorney, Michael Blacksburg, called the reviews “opinion statements” and said that the chiropractor’s business fell off after he filed the lawsuit because the number of referrals he got from Yelp dropped.

“Customers who use Yelp don’t want to be another potential lawsuit defendant if they choose to write a negative review,” Blacksburg said. “It has nothing to do with who’s right or wrong – they’re going to go with the chiropractor who chooses not to sue.”

The Yelper, now mired in legal costs, is seeking assistance from The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a local nonprofit that supports free speech online. An attorney with The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Matt Zimmerman, pointed out that the chiropractor would likely get far more negative publicity from filing the lawsuit than from a bad review on Yelp. He added that the foundation has seen an increase in the number of cases where people were trying to use the courts because of postings on the Internet.

“When people try to pull down unflattering material, it has the absolute opposite effect” of what they intend, he said. “It’s very difficult to silence speakers on the Internet – it’s a culture of people who don’t like those kinds of attempts.”

A spokeswoman for Yelp, Stephanie Ichinose, agreed. “Suing one of his patients over a single review (in light of the many positive reviews that he receives on our site) might end up tarnishing [the chiropractor's] reputation rather than enhancing it, not to mention the costs associated with litigation,” she said in an e-mail.

Back in August, Judge David Harvey of Manukau District Court  in New Zealand, presiding over a murder trial, decided to allow newspapers and television stations to report the names of the defendants but blocked websites from naming them.

Judge Harvey cited two reasons for the decision, it seems:

He said he was “concerned about someone Googling someone’s name and being able to access it later.”

Wow.

And he also was “concerned about the viral effect of digital publication.”

So it may have been that he was trying to avoid prejudicing the defendants in the case.

The judge reversed his ruling the following month.  According to the New Zealand Herald coverage of the matter, his reversal followed arguments by some media outlets to the effect “that online publication would not risk prejudicing the accused men’s rights to a fair trial.”  In other words, his second ruling did not appear to come from public or political pressure, or even from sabotage of his ruling by websites elsewhere in the world (though some offshore sites did publish the names in an apparent thumb-nosing to the ruling).

Interesting developments.

Perhaps the most compelling part of this story is that Judge Harvey is no neophyte in the field of Internet law.  In fact, he is something of an expert.  He has written a textbook on the law of the Internet called, cleverly,  internet.law.nz.  And he teaches the course on Law and Information Technology at the University of Auckland, which is apparently New Zealand’s best.