Facebook to the rescue

  There’s a love/hate/or don’t care relationship going on among many internet users of Facebook. Some say it’s too invasive while others post something on their Facebook page every day.
  I know some parents who only learn about the activities of their adult children by looking each day on Facebook. In this report you decide if Facebook is a positive thing or not.
  Rodney is a 19-year-old New York City guy who gets himself arrested for robbery in October of last year. NYPD locks him up on charges of mugging two other people in the public housing complex where he lives in Brooklyn.
  Rodney’s lawyers interviewed him in jail where he keeps protesting his innocence. At some point in the conversation Facebook is mentioned. “Sure, I use Facebook all the time,” says Rodney to his lawyer.
  The internet-savvy lawyer checks Rodney’s Facebook page and finds a message posted at 11:49 a.m. on the same day the robbery occurred.
  The posting, intended as a joke for Rodney’s girlfriend says, “WHERE MY IHOP?” The innocent message is in reference to Rodney’s love of pancakes. Who knew this would become a major piece of evidence that would eventually free Rodney from jail and clear him of all criminal charges?
  Rodney’s lawyer is able to prove that the message was posted from the IP address at the home of Rodney’s father in Harlem -- 13 miles from the crime scene -- at the same time the robbery was supposed to have occurred.
  Rodney could not have committed the crime. The message is too stylized for it to be posted by anybody else and the IP address is the clincher.
  I’m guessing the first thing Rodney did after being sprung from Riker’s Island was to gobble up a stack of IHOPs.