Washington state wants prisoners off Facebook

The State Department of Corrections is asking Facebook to shut down unauthorized prisoner accounts.

DOC Spokesman Chad Lewis said prisoners aren’t allowed to access the Internet behind bars, but some have maintained Facebook accounts through friends, relatives or by using contraband cell phones.

“Mostly it’s used to send illicit message to their spouses or girlfriends,” Lewis said. “We haven’t seen any incarcerated offenders use social media to conduct any illegal activity at this point.”

But, that’s not the case in California.

The social networking site already has a similar deal with prisons there after an inmate allegedly used such a site to track down his victim while behind bars.

“We decided to take the route that California did and work directly with Facebook and ask them if they would take down accounts that are activated either by the offender or someone on the outside that is updating their Facebook page on their behalf,” Lewis said.

Another route would be to pass new legislation to make it illegal for offenders to maintain social media accounts. But Lewis said that route would take longer and cost more.

Brandi Kruse, 97.3 KIRO FM Reporter

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Judge rejects Ceglia’s request for delay

The Wellsville man who claims to have helped create the social networking giant Facebook has lost another round in court and now faces a crucial new deadline.

A federal judge has rejected Paul Ceglia’s request for a delay in providing material that could decide his lawsuit against Facebook and its billionaire owner Mark Zuckerberg.

The judge’s ruling means Ceglia has until late today to provide five computer thumb drives that allegedly contain important information about his claim that he’s a co-founder of the global social networking system.

Facebook’s lawyer, in court papers challenging the delay, suggested that Ceglia is a desperate man running out of legal options.

“Ceglia brought a fraudulent lawsuit that is now crashing down around him,” Facebook lawyer Orin S. Snyder said in court papers.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara sets the stage for today’s court-ordered deadline for Ceglia to produce the material he promised the court back in July.

Earlier this month, Jeffrey Lake, Ceglia’s San Diego-based attorney, informed the court that his client could no longer find the computer thumb drives and other information storage devices.

Lake told U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie G. Foschio that he has asked Ceglia several times what happened to them.

He also dismissed Snyder’s suggestion that Ceglia wants to settle the case — Lake recently offered to seek mediation — because he knows it’s a loser.

“I disagree with that,” he told the court. “I’m being reasonable, and I invite open discussion.”

Ceglia claims he and Zuckerberg entered into a partnership in 2003 that now makes him a 50 percent owner of Facebook, a business reportedly worth $50 billion. Zuckerberg denies the existence of any Facebook partnership.

Earlier this month, Snyder filed court papers claiming that computers owned by Ceglia and his family contain evidence that the 2003 contract Ceglia provided to the court is a fraud. He said the “smoking gun” revelation was uncovered by technicians hired to analyze the computers.

“He claimed ownership of a substantial share in Facebook, Inc. based on an alleged contract that has now been revealed as a forgery, and purported ‘emails’ with Mark Zuckerberg that Ceglia created out of whole cloth,” Snyder said in his papers.

Ceglia lives in Allegany County but has not appeared in court in recent months. Lake said his client recently traveled to Ireland but does not know why he went there or how long he plans to stay.

In a recent email to the technology website ZDNet.com, Ceglia accused Facebook of manufacturing evidence against him.

“It’s laughable,” he said in the email. “They make this stuff up as they go along.”

pfairbanks@buffnews.comnull

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