Facebook (Australian edition) is happy to serve you — with legal papers

They do things differently in the Southern Hemisphere.

Long story (by Peter Smith and Richard Waters in today's Financial Times) short: The Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court has allowed Canberra solicitor Mark McCormack "... to use Facebook to serve legal documents on a couple who defaulted on a housing loan in what the social networking site believes is the first case of its kind."

"Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said the case was 'an interesting indication of the increasing role that Facebook is playing in people's lives. We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication.'"

Excuse me?

Prediction: Facebook will recant and be ashamed of itself for allowing its site to be co-opted by Big Brother.

Watch for that news upcoming very soon.

Meanwhile, here's the FT story.

Australian court allows lawyer to serve documents via Facebook

An Australian court has allowed a lawyer to use Facebook to serve legal documents on a couple who defaulted on a housing loan in what the social networking site believes is the first case of its kind.

Mark McCormack, a Canberra solicitor — and keen Facebook user — who is acting on behalf of a lender, said the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court had allowed him to serve papers after more conventional attempts to leave documents at the couple's last known address had failed.

Australian courts have previously allowed judgments to be delivered via e-mail, while Sonny Bill Williams, a rugby league star who walked out early on his contract with a Sydney club to play for France's Toulon, this year was notified of proceedings via SMS text message.

However, Facebook said the use of the site in Australia was thought to be the first of its kind.

Mr McCormack said using the site to contact people who had fled was a logical next step for solicitors and it had been easy to track down the couple. "In their loan application document, they provided an e-mail address. We typed the address of one of them into the Facebook search engine and it came back with only one Facebook profile matching that address," he said.

Some of the information in that profile, such as names and birth dates, had matched information in the loan application, and this had also helped persuade the court the right people had been found.

Facebook, whose 140m users make it the world's most popular social networking site, said users could adjust optional privacy settings to prevent anyone from outside their personal network contacting them, a move that would close off a legal manoeuvre such as Mr McCormack's.

Users can also choose to keep their existence on Facebook secret from internet search engines, though that would not stop someone who is already a member on Facebook from searching for them on the site.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the Australian case was "one more reminder that as our lives move increasingly online, the real world, including the lawyers and the judges, are likely to follow".

Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said: "We're pleased to see the Australian court validate Facebook as a reliable, secure and private medium for communication."

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Slow day at the office?

They're all slow?

Hey, I can't do much about that but I can offer you a link to 54 (at last count) other stories from around the world about Facebook's new incarnation as a process server.