Judges Rule Google Search by Employer Not Illegal

An anonymous reader passed us a link to an Ars Technica article about a failed lawsuit over a Google search. A federal circuit court of appeals has upheld the original ruling against David Mullins, who claimed that Googling his name constituted ex parte communications prior to firing him. "Through a series of events, Mullins' employer found that he had misused his government vehicle and government funds for his own purposes — such as sleeping in his car and falsifying hotel documents to receive reimbursements, withdrawing unauthorized amounts of cash from the company card, and traveling to destinations sometimes hundreds of miles away from where he was supposed to be ... Mullins' supervisor provided a 23-page document listing 102 separate instances of misconduct. Mullins took issue with a Google search that Capell performed just before authorizing his firing. During this Google search, Capell found that Mullins had been fired from his previous job at the Smithsonian Institution and had been removed from Federal Service by the Air Force."

Comments

Re:Employers usually do a search before hiring.

[Bob-taro]

I wouldn't even be surprised if there were companies which specialize in revenge, where you can google bomb someone's name and associate it with something unpleasant for a fee.

There is, I saw it on Dr. Phil. A woman had a website offering various services to get revenge on ex-boyfriends/ex-husbands. IIRC, putting damaging information about them (true or untrue) on the web was one of the tactics.

Re:Government jobs

[Lijemo]

The (very specific) regulation he claimed was violated applied only to government jobs, not to private sector. So no, it clearly wouldn't have.

Re:Does that mean

[Aaron Denney]

had quite a sorted professional and personal past

Sorted: all in order.
Sordid: dirty, immoral.