There is an interesting post at E-Group blog over at Blogs Canada involving a case that entered the court system only to see a mistrial.

It involves juveniles and a stabbing death in Toronto. Jonathan was 12 when he was stabbed 71 times in 2003. Three males were charged with the murder. The mistrial centers around the Crown’s key witness who was 14 at the time. She had a blog and contridictions between what she has said and what she blogged.

A mistrial was declared Tuesday night in the murder trial of three teenagers in Toronto amid allegations that a key prosecution witness lied about her interest in vampirism.

Justice David Watt made the ruling two days after the jury began deliberations.

Watt said the witness, a former girlfriend of one of the defendants, may have misled the court after a newspaper report that she had contradicted her sworn testimony in postings to the internet.

The post at E-Group raises the interesting problem of teen blogging.

Such blogs give these vulnerable teens an outlet of self-expression and expand the social circle of these young adults considerably beyond what they would normally be able to experience locally, especially if they’re not in a supportive home environment or live in a heterogenous urban context where they could feasibly discover teens with similar interests. Properly done, blogging such life crises and events can be a very positive mental health exercise.

That said, these young bloggers erroneously assume that their journals are simply an extension of a clique they’d have in their own community. Local cliques are sustained by more private means of communication - face to face communication, letters/journals, cellphones, etc. - that are by definition not broadcast to a potential audience of millions. Now, such private, locally-bounded cliques are not immune to discovery - inquisitive friends, busybody parents and, if necessary, law enforcement have broken this realm of communication since time immemorial. However, doing so requires a bit of contextual awareness and effort. Indeed, many such quasi-secret realms can be very hard to crack, much less discover. As cliques go international through blogging, however, anyone can be a voyeur with a simple Google search.

7% of Americans now have blogs which works out to about 8 million.
Of those 20% attract 80% of the attention.

And when teens, who have a false expectation of privacy and feels unlistened to, find themselves in an event that involves cause and effect, words and consequences move outside their small circle of friends in a devestating way.

So, these teen cliques largely wallow in anonymous, misunderstood, naive narcissism - in real life or online. That is, until something happens to give the world a reason to care. This is where the expectation of privacy falls - in real life or online.

The difference in cliques sustained by public blogs is that when the world suddenly discovers a reason to care, they have immediate access to all relevant information. The implosion of privacy is sudden and absolute. Maya Keyes and her friends learned this the hard way - now, the star witness in the “Johnathan” case has as well.

The implications for bloggers is obvious. Short of blogging under a pseudonym and aggressively maintaining the secrecy of this alter ego, it is logically untenable to assume you can compartamentalize your real and online lives. Statements made in either environment can and will be traced back to you if circumstances dictate that it is necessary to do so.

The relative anonymity one feels in online communication is not absolute, nor is it particularly predictable - three years of speaking to a very small cadre of like-minded folk can become suddenly and hugely public should anyone discover a reason to care.

I don’t think it is just teens who blur the line between private and public, but they are most vulnerable having grown up with the technology.