A clear and tweeting danger
On February 10, the media carried a story with the headline "Twittering US Government official endangers lives in Iraq".
Peter Hoekstra, a senior member of the US House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his arrival in Baghdad via his Blackberry with the post: "Just landed in Baghdad. I believe it may be first time I've had bb [Blackberry] service in Iraq. 11th trip here."
The Congressman's trip was to be kept secret and the media outlets that knew about the trip had agreed to keep the information confidential until he left Iraq. Hoekstra failed to consider the implications of his use of Twitter and had tweeted the trip in advance, and continued to post details about the party's itinerary every few hours, until the morning of February 6, when the issue was brought to his attention.
He placed himself and his entourage in danger by publishing his whereabouts. If insurgents in Iraq were avid Twitter followers of US House Intelligence Committee members, the information may have emboldened them to strike.
Both scenarios were fairly extreme examples of how Twitter and social media that encouraged the sharing of personal and/or activity information in the workplace were quite damaging. Another real, but lower-impact example, is found closer to home in the case of 'Fake Stephen Conroy', a Twitter personality who published satirical updates based on the activities and policies of the Federal Minister for Communications.
No one knew who the author of the Fake Stephen Conroy Twitter account was and speculation was rife until the owner tweeted his identity.
Internet sleuths matched the name with a listing on the popular professional networking site, LinkedIn, revealing a person with the same name holding a senior position in Telstra.
Fake Stephen Conroy was outed.
Not a good day for Telstra public and government relations I would imagine.
Many legal experts have given opinions that in most workplaces, employment contracts and company policies are unlikely to cover important aspects of employee use of social networking sites.
If employees are not made aware of what they are not allowed to do, they will possibly have a strong defence against termination, or any other disciplinary measure, citing lack of awareness of workplace conditions.
Employers need to keep in mind that unfair dismissal laws were strengthened in July, heightening the need for comprehensive workplace policies and education.
Putting the issue of dismissal aside, no company wants this kind of thing to happen through negligence, recklessness or innocent mistake.
They cost a business plenty; none of which is likely be recovered in a meaningful way through a dismissal (this only adds to the cost in monetary terms - and potentially moreso if an unfair dismissal claim gets up).
This is where responsible and forward-thinking companies will step up to the mark to engage in workplace education to minimise the damage that could be done by employees.
Businesses need to keep in mind that most of their employees haven't received any formal education about social networking or internet safety.
The alternative is to ban Internet access and personal communication devices with data capabilities and there are too many reasons to list why that is not going to happen in 99 percent of workplaces.
Protecting your brand and your intellectual property
The major and reputable social-media platforms take intellectual property breaches seriously but given their size they can't proactively determine the legitimacy of content posted on their platforms, or if it was created or posted by the relevant owner, so it's important that affected companies notify the social networks.
In some respects, brands may benefit from the multitude of fan groups or other endorsements of their brands that pop up on social media - or product placement that occurs in video content.
The US TV comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live, classically always requested YouTube, MySpace Video and other internet video sharing sites to remove clips from their show until the Tina Fey video of her famous impersonation of Sarah Palin went so massively viral that it promoted the show, seeing an increase in the TV ratings for the show for the weeks following (some sources quote up to 23 percent).
Samboy Chips reappeared on Australian supermarket shelves wholly and solely as a result of a highly popular Facebook group titled 'Bring back Atomic Tomato'. As recently as last month, Chris Brown's track Forever has re-entered the global digital pop charts thanks to the viral video Jill and Kevin's Big Day.
Despite the benefits that some misuse of intellectual property brings to a brand, IP owners don't and won't necessarily always enjoy this kind of outcome when others use their product in their social network pages or hijack their user names.
If your business doesn't own the vanity URL or IDs to which they relate in MySpace, Facebook or Twitter then you should explore options to secure these or have them removed.
If your trademark or names haven't been claimed then your marketing department should be right on them.
There are more than 100 sites for which a business should apply rights to even if it's just to protect themselves from others appropriating them to the business owner's detriment.
Australian Vogue earlier this year engaged lawyers to have a fake Twitter account removed, although this kind of heavy-handed approach is probably not necessary in most cases.
The more reputable social networks such as MySpace, will do what they can to assist you with regards to any misuse of your IP; for most social media platforms misuse of intellectual property is a breach of their terms of use.
David Batch is a former director of safety for Australia and New Zealand at Fox Interactive Media, the publisher of MySpace Australia, and a former Australian Federal Police agent. He consults on IT security and trust issues for organisations such as the Surete Group. He can be contacted at batch@suretegroup.com.au
This is an edited transcript of a speech delivered to the e-Crime Symposium in Sydney earlier this month.
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