Last week’s international privacy conference in Montreal provided a gastronomic backdrop for me to reconnect with a good friend, Stewart Dresner who was visiting from the UK.
Stewart’s firm, Privacy Laws and Business, is celebrating 20 years of advising companies and governments on issues dealing with data protection and privacy.
Recently, there have been a number of articles in PL&B; publications examining the privacy issues associated with social networking sites – from the perspective of companies hosting such services and organizations that have blocked access to such sites from the workplace.
In its September 2007 UK report, PL&B; noted
the interactive nature of these networks allows management effectively to listen in on staff “discussions” of grievances and how they might be addressed, which are much more honest and open than the company’s internal complaints procedure.
However,
the public nature of the networks mean that the media can bring this to the attention of management, often sooner than they would otherwise have heard of it.
How does your firm deal with Facebook? Do you embrace the power and channel it? Do you monitor the chatter about your firm?
Michael Geist delivered the closing remarks at the Montreal conference. He writes more about some of the issues discussed at the conference on his blog and in his Law Bytes column this week. Alec Saunders also writes today on a similar topic with The Social Networking “Bill of Rights”.
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