Sure, I agree that special steps should be taken, but in our age of automatic/transparent updates and data longevity I think we need to re-evaluate the immediate responses taken by law enforcement when restraining orders are violated.
It's not at all far-fetched for scenarios where apps automatically send messages to current/previous contacts without the user's consent (in fact we've seen this time and time again). Should the immediate response really be to jail the offender, especially if the process for proving intention one way or another can be long and arduous? Because if that's the case, what we're really asking is for people with restraining orders to become technology-shunning luddites since they can't guarantee the apps they use won't have mined their connections in the past, or that apps they've stopped using after the restraining order don't send messages on their behalf.
I agree that apps and aspects of modern life make it too easy for someone to appear to have broken an order even if they had no intent of doing so.
Perhaps some kind of pre-court mediation where the parties can apologies and explain and demonstrate willingness to abide by the order?
I kind of hope that headlines like "Facebook request sent me to prison" makes app authors think carefully about grabbing email address lists and sending to all of them.
Perhaps there could be a honeypot project where people include trap addresses on their contact lists?
It's not at all far-fetched for scenarios where apps automatically send messages to current/previous contacts without the user's consent (in fact we've seen this time and time again). Should the immediate response really be to jail the offender, especially if the process for proving intention one way or another can be long and arduous? Because if that's the case, what we're really asking is for people with restraining orders to become technology-shunning luddites since they can't guarantee the apps they use won't have mined their connections in the past, or that apps they've stopped using after the restraining order don't send messages on their behalf.