Facebook evidence access delaying Nova Scotia court cases

Facebook is all about instantlysharing yourexperiences, but one lawyer saysthecompany isn't as quickto shareevidence for court cases.

Legal aid lawyerMegan Longleysays manyof her cases involve comments or messages made on social media, butrecovering that information from Facebook can be difficult.

"The only way to access that would be through Facebook headquarters in California, which involves a court order at the national level in Canada that then gets sent to the States for disclosure orders," says Longley, the managing lawyerof Nova Scotia Legal Aid's youth justice office.

That can take months, even up to a year, she says.

"Trials can simply not be delayed indefinitely while we wait to get this kind of information," she says. "I think the more prevalent social media isand becomesas evidence in cases, the more of that we're going to see."

Longley said in some cases trial dates are pushed back and people have wait to have their day in court.

She said sometimes information can be printed off Facebook and presented to the court.However,anything that's been removed or deleted from Facebook needs to be sought from the company.

Police say social media sites cooperative

Halifax police, however, say they have a good relationship with social media sites.

"There is a process in place, it does take time unfortunately and it's just the way the business goes," Sgt. Pierre Bourdages said. "We're talking eightto 10 weeks before getting information back."

That evidence is then passed to the defence, which needs time to review it.Boudages wouldn't say if he believesthe process should be sped up.

"I don't think it's our position to comment on that. There is a process in place, the main thing here is that it involves two countries, two different legal systems," Bourdages said.

"Thankfully, with our allies in the United States, we do have some reciprocal agreements in place which allow U.S. law enforcement and Canadian law enforcement to cooperate together and obtain information from both sides of the border."

Facebooksays it responds to valid court orders

A Facebook spokesperson saidthe company is committed to helping law enforcement, but it rejects any requests it deems too broad or vague.

The company will also onlyprovide information if there is a valid court order.

The spokespersonsaidit's unusual for the company to take months to provide information and Facebookusually responds very quickly once it has a court order.

The company doesnot release details on how long it takes toprovide information to investigators.

But it says between July 2014 and December 2014 itreceived 279 requests for information from Canadian law enforcement. Some data was handed over to Canadian authorities in57.71 per cent of those cases.