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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."
Does that mean google searches by employee are okay too?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
So according to him it wasn't the 102 documented instances of misbehavior that were presented to him before the Googling that did him in. It was the Googling that confirmed his pattern of behavior that did him in...Give me a break, guy. Not to mention, with a resume like that, he's bound to be hired as CEO for some major pharmaceutical company or something...
This guy's the limit!
What about googling before hiring? Could be more efective.
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
A lot of employers do a search before hiring. If not on Google then with ChoicePoint.
That's one of the reasons those Duke lacrosse players were fighting their charges so hard. One of their parents told Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" after claiming that this case would ruin their kids life, that in the future when they apply for a job, the employer will Google their kids name and this case will come right to the top.
That's one of the dark sides of the internet. If you get accused of a crime, it's all over the internet. And even if you're acquitted, charges dropped, or found innocent, you're now all over the internet, and people will see that and immediately assume the worst.
Yeah, the guy in TFA appears to have committed all of those acts, but what about folks falsely accused or in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What was it? Keep repeating a lie and it becomes true? Well, on the internet, it's donw automatically.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I got caught and I don't like it. I want to be able to steal from my employer and rip the taxpayers off. Everyone does it so why should I be penalized?
Wahhh! Wahhh!
For as much as we rip government agencies for wasting money, three cheers for NOAA for tracking down this asshat and firing him.
The real question is, and one which is not answered in the article, are they going to get the money back from him?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
If they found something about a different person who had the same name, he might have an outside chance of making a complaint.
But from the sounds of it, he should lay low and be thankful there aren't criminal charges. A Google search is no different from, say, searching newspaper clippings by hand. If reality is prejudicial to his employment, it's not his employer's fault.
All this employee protection crap is bull shit. An employer should be able to hire/fire anyone they want without having to go through a bunch of red tape. Same thing with unemployment. There is no reason that an employer should ever have to continue to pay someone they fired because the person is too lazy to get off their butt and find a job. Come on, enough with employee rights, where are our employer rights... And don't get me started on the double taxation that happens with self employment tax. This country needs some serious reform in the way we run businesses. Citizens should be encouraged to start a business in something they enjoy, not discouraged with the threat of having to pay someone unemployment pay because they do a shitty job and you don't want them to work for you anymore.
So, back to the story, why is googling someone illegal? If I'm an employer, yes, I want to know what other employers have though of this person. There is no reason their should be any laws against researching the person you are hiring.
Sam
Honestly nothing to see here
With all of the information people are throwing out there about themselves, they deserve to have it used against them in any shape form or fashion. If you want to be the moron who posts everything about yourself on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and all those other sites, you have nothing but yourself to blame. They fired me for using drugs! If you're the moron with a picture of you happily holding a bong on MySpace and expected no one but friends to see it, you shot your own self in the foot. Its amazing the level of stupidity some people can get to then come back around and point the finger at everyone but themselves. On other notes... Information pertaining to just about anything on the planet is already readily available. Court records, financial information... All this misuse/abuse of information is made possible by the same people bitching who often turn their cheeks when future misuse in the making is present. You didn't say nothing then... Why bother bitching now... YOU GAVE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS TO PRIVACY BY NOT ACTING BEFORE WHY BITCH ABOUT IT NOW?
Infiltrated dot Net
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
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."
That's shocking. What sort of Draconian employment termination policies are in action here? Removed from federal service by the air force? Usually, I'd just have a quiet word to let the employee know their services are no longer required.
"Security, escort Mullins from the office. Yes, of course I mean with the F-16s..."
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
I expected more from the slashdot community on this topic. Lots of posts suggest that if you put anything in a public space, you shouldn't expect privacy in your professional life.
Here is the problem; What if you didn't put the information out there? Remember the school principal who sued a bunch of students for putting up a fake myspace page? What would you say if the board of education fired this guy because of the content on the page?
I've seen some great "photoshopped" pictures that were very believable. Would you like an HR person to make an employment decision about you based on a fake picture or a malicious blog entry?
Employers, much like students doing research, should only use verifiable authoritative sources for personnel information. The internet (most of it) falls very short of this standard.
-ted
From the decision [emphasis mine]:
"No ex-parte communication occurred when the Deciding Official, Ms. Capell, discovered for herself that "in 1996, the Department of the Air Force removed the appellant from a civil service position and that in 1997, the Smithsonian Institution told [Mr. Mullins] to 'look for a new job.'" Indeed, the only "communication" that occurred was when Mr. Mullins communicated with Ms. Capell to bring to her attention the negative information about himself "by suggesting he had been subject to Board proceedings before." Ex-parte communications are procedural defects only when they cause prejudice that undermines due process guarantees. Because Mr. Mullins' two prior job losses did not affect Ms. Capell's decision to remove Mr. Mullins, the record shows no prejudice. Indeed, on April 22, 2005, before Ms. Capell discovered Mr. Mullins' two prior job losses, Mr. Grahl had already outlined 102 specifications to support the four charges of misuse and misconduct against Mr. Mullins."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Once upon a time, just about everyone lived in small communities. You would expect to live, work, and die in the same little town where your parents and your close relatives lived. Once you got a reputation in such a community, deserved or undeserved, it would probably follow you for life.
Then we had the Industrial Revolution, big cities, relatively cheap transatlantic travel, etc., and all of a sudden it was possible--difficult, but possible--to make a clean break with your past and forge a new life. Many of the life-affecting judgements that were previously made by busybody neighbors were instead made by impersonal bureaucrats.
Now, all sorts of personal information about us online and searchable, and folks who grew up with the Net are less inhibited than their elders about putting more personal stuff online. It looks like the Internet is putting us all in the same virtual small town. I don't think that's an entirely good thing, but I don't see how it can be prevented.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
The (very specific) regulation he claimed was violated applied only to government jobs, not to private sector. So no, it clearly wouldn't have.
He must've been new there.