Most tweeting attorneys know that what you write on your personal Twitter account is yours. In fact, Twitter itself weighed in and clarified its terms of service to say that an account’s tweets are owned by the author. But the…

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Technologist Cynthia Hsu

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Gone are the days when employers generally blocked or otherwise prohibited social networking by their employees. Why? The business upside evidently outweighs the…

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Technologist Adam Ramirez

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. London was recently besieged with riots. In the wake of these often-organized riots, Prime Minister David Cameron has stated that Britain is…

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Technologist Adam Ramirez

Is Twittersquatting the new cybersquatting? It might not be, but it’s certainly proven to be more than annoying for Coventry First. Coventry First is a leading company in the secondary life insurance market. Essentially, Coventry buys rights to life insurance…

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Technologist Cynthia Hsu

No one can resist social media. The urge to tweet and post on Facebook walls reaches to the highest levels of our nation, as Justice Stephen Breyer is taking advantage of Twitter and Facebook. What would you expect a…

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Technologist Adam Ramirez

A case involving a photographer who posted images of the Haiti earthquake to Twitter service Twitpic only to find others claiming rights to the images opens up IP issues. How far is an image allowed to go once posted? It can be retweeted, but what rights has the copyright owner retained?

Ask and ye shall receive.  My January 21st post discussed some of the potential legal issues that could arise by using Twitter.  Lo and behold, one just did.  And from a Congressman no less.  And not just any Congressman, but House Minority Leader John Boehner, who also happens to be the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

It seems that Boehner could have used some of that intelligence before he twittered his network about his secret trip to Baghdad.  As he arrived in Iraq, he sent the following “tweet” from his BlackBerry:  “Just landed in Baghdad. I believe it may be first time I’ve had bb service in Iraq.  11th trip here.”  Nothing like letting people know the time and place of where you happen to be.  It’s not like terrorists would be interes—whoops.  Nevermind.

If the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee can so easily and nonchalantly disclose secret information, you can only imagine what else will be coming down the pike in the near future.  While it’s unclear if any laws were broken in this instance, it nevertheless highlights the dangers of the informal nature of Twitter that I discussed in my earlier post.  Security lapses like this are just the beginning.

It will only be a matter of time (if it hasn’t happened already), until someone gets his/her employer in trouble for using Twitter, the latest social networking and “microblogging” craze.  (Does it ever end?)  As if the well-known dangers of e-mailing haven’t been documented enough over the years—and have been a boon to litigators—Twitter may soon up the ante.

The issues are really no different than those that have already surfaced with e-mails.  Issues involving privacy, confidentiality, defamation, sexual harassment, discrimination, and copyright infringement (to name a few potential problem areas) have been well-litigated over the years.  By now, most employers hopefully have a formal e-mailing and internet usage policy in place for their employees to follow.  Instilling a healthy sense of fear never hurts.  

So how much harm can someone do with 140 characters or less on Twitter?   As a lawyer, I’ve learned never to underestimate the ability of clients to get themselves in all sorts of trouble.  As with texting, it’s only a matter of time before we all read about some clueless employee who gets him/herself fired and puts the employer in legal hot water.  And of course, it’s only a matter of time before lawyers start subpoening these types of electronic communications also.  Just because a message is only a few characters long doesn’t mean that it won’t be stored and saved—possibly forever.

But as noted by one commentator in the article linked-to above, Twitter messages are “quick sound bites and instantaneous” and “aren’t the most well-thought out.”  Someone who is upset, angry, or frustrated could easily use poor judgment and—in a few characters or less—wreak all sorts of havoc on his/her employer.  And once it ends up in the Twitter universe, it’s there for all to see . . . again and again and again.

Needless to say, an employer’s e-mail and internet usage policy should be specifically updated to account for services such as Twitter.  Employees must understand that even very short messages (designed for the inner ADD child who seems to live in all of us these days) can create liability.  Not that it will stop everyone, but it will stop some people.  And the ones it doesn’t stop?  Well, I’m just a “tweet” away!