Assistant Data Protection Commissioner, Tony Delaney, has recently welcomed the outcome of prosecution proceedings which concluded at Letterkenny Circuit Court and which were taken by An Garda Síochána against a former civil servant. In this case the defendant was accused of a number of charges of receiving corrupt payments between [...]
A recent European Court of Human Rights ruling provides that employers must notify their employees in advance if their professional email accounts are to be monitored. The case Barbulescu v Romania concerned a Romanian man who was made redundant after it was found that he had used his work email [...]
A full copy of the press release is available to view here. According to the Press Release, "The proposed Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications will increase the protection of people's private life and open up new opportunities for business: New players: 92% of Europeans say it is important that [...]
The recent English decision of Mr Adrian Smith v Trafford Housing Trust [2012 EWHC 3221 (Ch) delivered by Justice Briggs in November 2012 sheds further light on the explosion of social media and how it impacts on the workplace. This case is one to watch as it concerns a breach of contract action, which [...]
It is proposed under new EU rules that Ireland's Data Protection Commission may be set to become the lead agency for regulating companies such as Facebook and Google across Europe. In a proposed overhaul by the EU Commission of data protection rules, companies will have to contact fewer regulators for [...]
In a recent talk I gave on Social Media and the law, the issue of discoverability of social media evidence was a hot topic and I recently came across another interesting case EEOC v Original Honeybaked Ham Company of Georgia Inc., No.11-02560-MSK_MEH (D.Col. Nov.7, 2012) reported on the excellent Delaware Employment Law Blog. This case [...]
It has been reported that California is now the third state to pass legislation banning employers from requesting or requiring the social-networking passwords of employees and applicant as highlighted in the very informative Delaware Employment Law Blog http://www.delawareemploymentlawblog.com/2012/08/california-is-now-the-third.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blawgs%2FNZgVCom+(Delaware+Employment+Law+Blog). From previous posts, Maryland was the first state to pass a social media [...]
On Tuesday of this week, the Californian Senate unanimously passed the Social Privacy Bill which will prohibit Colleges and Universities from requesting access to student's social media accounts. Governor Jerry Brown has until 30th September 2012 to sign or veto the Bill. As outlined in my recent blog posts, there [...]
Illinois has become the second state after Maryland in the US to ban employers from asking employees or job candidates for their Facebook or other social networking account information. Several other states are also considering bans, including Washington, Delaware and New Jersey. This week, Illinois Govenor Pat Quinn signed into law [...]
I recently came across this case of the London South Employment Tribunal of 19th June 2012 whilst doing some research for a presentation I am doing for Legal Island later this year. The UK case of Otomewo v Carphone Warehouse [2012] EqLR 724 again demonstrates that employers can be held vicariously liable for discriminatory [...]
Another interesting article from the Delaware Employment Law Blog concerning the Discovery of Plaintiff's Social-Networking Profile. Here Molly diBianca reports on the case of Thompson v. Autoliv ASP, Inc., where the plaintiff alleged personal-injury and product-liability claims, arising from a car accident in April 2007. The plaintiff alleged that she sustained [...]
Interesting article (link attached here) reporting case in Manhattan on July 2nd whereby Twitter ordered to turn over some of deleted tweets of a user who was arrested in October 2011 during an Occupy Wall Street demonstration. Although Twitter opposed the application, the Judge remained firm except to limit what [...]
Is the High Court on Facebook? - Lexology. In (1) Ako Capital LLP (2) Ako Master Fund Limited v TFS Derivatives Limited), before granting permission, the High Court in the UK sought assurances that (a) the relevant Facebook account belonged to the person in question and (b) the individual habitually checked the account. The [...]
Interesting article on whether Google through gathering data for it's Google Maps Street View Cars was involved in significant breaches of data protection and privacy laws. After its 17 month investigation, it was concluded that Google did not engage in illegal wiretapping because the data (obtained through unencrypted wi fi routers) was [...]
During a recent talk in Deloitte on "Social Media and the Law", I spoke about the fact that Maryland became the first state in the US to ban employers from asking both employees and job applicants for their social media passwords. The bill, which passed both houses of Maryland’s legislature, is expected to be [...]
