There is concern about a bill making its way through the Senate that would drastically change individuals’ privacy interest in their internet communications and “cloud” information. The bill, named the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2011, originally started out as offering more protection to individuals, but after law enforcement expressed its concerns about
NLRB Issues New Memo On Validity of Social Media Policies
In October 2012 the National Labor Relations Board issued an advice memorandum regarding whether an employer’s social media policy violated the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). This memorandum is of importance because the NLRB has issued findings recently that employer’s seemingly neutral social media policies violated employees’ rights under the NLRA. Section 7 of the
Chris Sacca – Bold Humility
I had the opportunity to attend an event with Chris Sacca last night. He is a venture capitalist who 
has been living part-time in Los Angeles recently. He spoke about how he grew up in the investment scene in Silicon Valley. He got his feet wet in investing when he started day trading law school
Inside Litigation Over Social Media Accounts – Why Employers Should Have Social Media Policies – Part I
As previously written about on this blog, the case PhoneDog v. Kravtiz is one of the first cases in the country to deal with substantive ownership issues arising out of social media accounts used in the workplace. As companies are moving more and more away from traditional marketing and advertising towards the use of
Does the Company or the Employee Own a Twitter Account?
Imagine you are an employer and your employee in charge of your social media accounts leaves, keeps the accounts, and begins using the accounts while working for a competitor. Conversely, imagine you are an employee, leave employment to work for a competitor and your former employer sues you for $350,000 because you refuse to stop
Employees Need To Take Control Of Their Online Identities
The recent (and not too recent) flurry of attention that has been given to the issue regarding whether 
employers can ask applicants and employees for their Facebook passwords is a good review of what is appropriate conduct for employers, but it is also a good reminder to employees that what they do online is of
Everyone Needs To Calm Down About Social Media And The Law
I would love to be able to tell my clients that the Internet and social media has created a very complex set of legal issues that requires them to hire me in order to help develop all new handbook policies, change the way they conduct background checks on applicants, and monitor their employees. However, unfortunately
Employers Requiring Employees To Provide Facebook Passwords
There are 
more reports of employers requiring applicants and employees to provide their passwords to their Facebook pages so that the employers can get a more accurate view of the employee’s character. I wrote about this issue a couple of years ago regarding the City of Bozeman requiring passwords from applicants. Apart from being
Top iPad Apps For Human Resources
Apple is announcing the iPad 3 today, and given that it’s probably going to dominate the news cycle, I decided I should join in the hype. Don’t get me wrong, the iPad is great, and I use mine very day. People use iPads to fly airplanes, play instruments, avoid getting lost by using
Use of Ships To Skirt California Laws?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting about the plans of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who would 
like to anchor a ship 12 miles off the San Francisco coast in order to skirt U.S. Immigration laws. They project that the ships could hold 1,000 people at a cost for a room roughly equivalent (if not cheaper) to an