Photo’s and documents of tornado victims posted on Facebook

Last week, more than 100 individual tornadoes struck the Southeastern part of the United States. Unfortunately many people were killed and injured in this immense natural disaster.

The clean-up from this disaster is turning out to be remarkably disturbing. Many people have reported finding strangers' belongings and pieces of demolished homes in their yards. In several cases, debris found appeared to have been relocated as far as 100 kilometres.

Among the lost and found objects are thousands of photo’s and documents that were blown away from houses and offices. In response to this, someone has set up a new Facebook group where people are posting scans of photos and documents they've found after the tornados.

Hundreds of pictures and texts have been uploaded. Although some people will be happy to reconnect to their belongings online, it is expected that, sadly enough, many will never be able to able to come and collect them.

From a legal point of view, especially regarding copyright and data protection, this Facebook-account for ‘lost and found’ documents is quite peculiar. Most probably, no permission was given to scan and publish these files. Also, it will be very difficult to ever remove the information from the world wide web.

Many of the published pictures are obviously private and the uploaded documents undoubtedly contain sensitive and confidential information. I am sure the mortgage details, birth certificates and other documents were scanned to help the person that lost them get back in touch with important paperwork. However, I’m not sure Facebook is the most suitable platform to use for this.

Sources: CNN, Facebook, AL.com, BoingBoing