April 29, 2010 - Doug Hanchard
Blogging and Journalism, is it the same thing? Is it manageable and protected? Is it secure and suitable for public consumption? When the press releases a story about your company, what recourse do you have if you believe critical patent or trade secrets may be exposed illegally? Are employees leaking information to the press?
The New York Times article surrounding Gizmodo's reporting of the new 4G Apple iPhone raises serious questions not only in journalism circles, but ricocheting legal questions in legal departments around the world.
The journalist / blogger's home of Jason Chen was searched by the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) Police team in San Mateo, California (Silicon Valley) executing a search warrant on Friday April 23, 2010. The story has raises several questions that just about everyone has stated an opinion.
The specific focus of this post is a discussion about how your data published, secured and legally stored. How is your organisation setup to handle internal and employees that blog? Are the risks real or overblown?
Information is king, it always will be. The more information you make public, the higher your risk. Over simplified to be sure, but consider these questions;
The raid of Jason Chen's home, the question of why the police executed a search warrant at his residence instead of the corporate offices of Gizmodo is of concern. There are more questions than there are answers - for now. Among them;
The search of the journalist home is not unheard of, but it's not the norm either. There is no federal shield law in the United States or in many other countries.
Would it have made made a difference if Jason Chen had stored his information in the cloud using a third party provider such as Google, Yahoo or Hotmail? It could be argued it would be safer or more dangerous to do so. Corporate control of how information is stored, used and published is critical. It's not just blog articles which create vulnerabilities.
Companies using third party providers to create shared network environments for its employees offering collaboration tools such as Google calendar, docs, schedulers, email, work spaces (like Google Wave), or Microsoft's new docs.com cloud apps may in fact make it easier for enforcement agencies to obtain information that could be easily be taken out of context.
Here are some important issues to consider:
In the blog post outsource email?, the trail of breadcrumbs you leave behind may offer circumstantial evidence behind, leaving you and others exposed to negative press and marketing stories beyond your control. It's been reported that the seller of the iPhone has been found. Was this party found via the search warrant or other sources, such as Apple's own security department? How did the press find out? Put your organisation in this scenario, the legal ramifications faced could be staggering.
Recommendations your company should consider:
Today, blogging by corporate executives is the norm. It has risks and employees may construe that since executives are doing so it is safe for them too. Corporate blogging is not the same as a blogger reporting news like Jason Chen. Even still, care needs to be taken regardless of what a blog is construed as.
Apple potentially faces negative PR how this story unfolds as does law enforcement.
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Additional Resources:
Forms of blogging to be aware of:
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