Author: Doug Cornelius

You can find out more about Doug on the About Doug page

Governing Social Media: How to Monitor, Manage and Make the Most of Employee Use of Social Media

Join me, Kathleen Edmond, Chief Ethics Officer, Best Buy, and Janice Innis-Thompson, SVP & Chief Compliance Officer, TIAA-CREF, as we discuss compliance and governance issues of web 2.0 and social networking.

“Corporate Communication takes on a whole new meaning in a world of social media, where employees can freely post their views and spread documents, photographs and even videos across the globe with a click of a mouse. Companies that are ahead of the curve not only have established policies regarding use of social media sites by their executives and employees, but also are finding ways to use social media to their competitive advantage. Join our panel to hear about the risks and rewards that a well managed approach to social media can bring.”

Our Session: Governing Social Media: How to Monitor, Manage and Make the Most of Employee Use of Social Media

The Economist Special Report on Social Networking.

“An astonishing amount of time is being wasted on investigating the amount of time being wasted on social networks.”

I love reading The Economist because of lines like that. The January 28 issue has a special report on social networking. (The cover image is Steve Jobs dressed like Moses with his new tablet)

“Another [report], by Nucleus Research, an American firm, concluded that if companies banned employees from using Facebook while at work, their productivity would improve by 1.5%. This assumes that people would actually work rather than find some other way to pass the time they have to spare. In the same vein, perhaps companies should also ban water coolers and prohibit people sending e-mails to their friends. The assumption that firms can block access to the networks altogether is also rather heroic. Some employees now have web-enabled smart phones, so trying to stop them from surfing their favourite sites will be another waste of time.”

What is different about Web 2.0?

“All this shows just how far online communities have come. Until the mid-1990s they were largely ghettos for geeks who hid behind online aliases. Thanks to easy-to-use interfaces and fine-grained privacy controls, social networks have been transformed into vast public spaces where millions of people now feel comfortable using their real identities online.”

As is typical with The Economist, the report is straight forward and full of facts. There is none of the hyperbole of the social media snake oil salesman.

This special report will examine these issues in detail. It will argue that social networks are more robust than their critics think, though not every site will prosper, and that social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size. Lastly, it will contend that this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of global interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.

The stories in the special report:

Tax on Carried Interest? Maybe Not.

Tucked into the Tax Extenders Act of 2009 (H.R. 4213) was a provision targeted at partnership interests held by partners providing services. H.R. 4213 flew through the legislative process of the House of Representatives. It was introduced on December 7, 2009 and passed by the House on December 9, mostly along party lines. The Carried Interest Tax is one of several dozen changes to the tax code included in that bill.

But will the bill pass in the Senate? Let’s hear from Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan):

  • “I don’t think it’s going to be part of the Senate bill.”
  • “While members of the committee have brought it up, it won’t be part of any bill we pass.”
  • “You never know, but I seriously doubt it.”

The US Senate has not introduced anything similar to the Tax Extenders Act. With a Democratic controlled Senate I assumed that passage was inevitable.

But it appear that the divide between the House and the Senate on private equity and private funds appears to be growing. Both bodies keep talking about clamping down on hedge funds, but neither seems to know what one is and is not bothering to define it in the legislation.

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More on Data Privacy Day

Today is International Data Privacy Day.

Massachusetts Recognizes Data Privacy Day 2010 and touts the the new data security regulations.

Disney has enlisted Phineas and Ferb to help guide your kids through cyberspace and teach them about the rules of the road on the internet.

Google published their guiding privacy principles and published a video discussing them:

Data Privacy Day is January 28

Data Privacy Day is an annual international celebration to raise awareness and generate discussion about information privacy. Last year, both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives recognized January 28th, 2009 as National Data Privacy Day.

Intel, Microsoft, Google, AT&T, LexisNexis and The Privacy Projects are sponsoring Data Privacy Day efforts, with assistance from Intuit and Oracle.

Even if you are not responsible for privacy at the office, you are responsible for your kids. The Data Privacy Day 2010 has some great resources for Teens, Young Adults, and Parents & Kids. Take a look at the FTC’s You Are Here to see some of the problems faced by kids online. Make sure to Visit the Security Plaza to learn about protecting your privacy (online and off).

You are responsible for your own online activity. In looking at a recent data breach, “123456”, “12345”, “123456789” and password were the most common passwords. Even Twitter banned these passwords, along with 366 other obvious passwords.

A list of 32 million passwords that an unknown hacker stole last month from RockYou, a company that makes software for users of social networking sites, provided a treasure trove of information for security analysis. About 20 percent of people on the RockYou list picked from the same, relatively small pool of 5,000 passwords. Hackers could easily break into many accounts just by trying the most common passwords.

Security experts advise that a password should consist of letters, numbers and even punctuation symbols. They should be changed regularly and you should not use the same password for all your online services.

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Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem “Fear the Boom and Bust”

For you economics geeks, how about a rap duel between John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek?

In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

It may be one the most bizarre things you see today.

If you liked the video, it can get more bizarre. There is Planet Money podcast that is just as strange, involving “a cable tv producer from New Jersey, a podcasting libertarian economist, an international pop superstar and the two dead economists who brought them all together.”

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Blue Collar or White Collar

Undercover agents, wire taps and search warrants. For a criminal case it sounds like your typical organized crime investigation. You would expect the indictment to have charges for drug dealing, racketeering, murder or something similar.

But last week we heard that these were the techniques used to catch the 22 people indicted for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. An undercover FCPA sting?

The FBI and DOJ are now using blue collar investigation tools for white collar crimes. As Scott Greenfield points out, in prison all collars are striped.

These white collar defendants used email and left a nice paper trail for undercover feds to put together their indictments. One defendant even ran the issue past his compliance department, but ignored their advice. These defendants made it easy.

A smart drug dealer will wonder if the person on the other side of the deal is a cop. Now white collar criminals need to start having the same concerns. After all, briefcases are great for holding recording equipment.

FINRA Issues Guidance on Social Networking Sites

Securities firms and brokers have been looking for guidance on how they can use social networking sites. Actually most industries have been trying to figure out what they can and cannot do with these sites. The difference is that the FINRA limitations on communicating with the public make it very difficult to use the sites in compliance with the FINRA rules.

Yesterday, FINRA released Regulatory Notice 10-06 that “clarifies the responsibilities of firms to supervise the use of social networking sites to ensure that recommendations are suitable and their customers are not misled. The Notice also addresses the recordkeeping and other responsibilities of firms.”

The primary goal of FINRA is to protect investors. So this notice does not open the floodgates for using social network sites. They note that they are not even certain that adequate technology currently exists to meet the requirements in the notice. I’m sure vendors will take notice.

“The goal of this Notice is to ensure that—as the use of socialmedia sites increases over time—investors are protected from false or misleading claims and representations, and firms are able to effectively and appropriately supervise their associated persons’ participation in these sites.”

In developing the Regulatory Notice, FINRA worked with its Social Networking Task Force composed of compliance and other representatives of 14 firms.

The notice does not change FINRA policies or their positions.  But there are some useful clarifications. If you have used a blog, FaceBook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, the clarifications are fairly obvious. For example, a blog can be an advertisement or an interactive electronic forum. It just depends on whether you allow comments or interactivity.

FINRA has scheduled a webinar to address Regulatory Notice 10-06: Compliance Considerations for Social Networking Sites

Orignally, I heard some hints that there may be some new policies announced as part of FINRA’s March 17 webinar: Implementing Compliance Practices for Social Media. But now that description has been changed to mere address implementation of Regulatory Notice 10-06.

Sources:

Global Ethics Summit Update

Global Ethics Summit

Dow Jones and Ethisphere Institute are teaming up to present the 2010 Global Ethics Summit on February 23-24, 2010 at the Grand Hyatt New York City.

I will be attending, thanks to an offer from the event’s organizers. If you are interested in attending I can offer you a 15% discount on regular conference fees, available by registering online (http://www.globalethicssummit.com/register) with the code “GES10P”.

They just added two new keynote speakers:

  • Mark Mendelsohn, Deputy Chief of Fraud Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice
  • C. Turney Stevens, Dean, College of Business, Lipscomb University

They will be joining the other previously announced speakers:

  • Brackett Denniston, Senior Vice President & General Counsel, General Electric
  • Charles L. Harrington, Chairman & CEO, Parsons
  • Andy Hinton, Chief Compliance Officer & Associate General Counsel, Google
  • Georg Kell, Executive Director, United Nations Global Compact
  • Douglas M. Lankler, Senior Vice President & Chief Compliance Officer, Pfizer

I also need to disclose that they gave me a pass to attend as a media sponsor of the event. You can see Compliance Building listed as a media sponsor. In exchange, I’m writing a few blog posts leading up to the summit and will be live-blogging from it.

Global Ethics Summitt main banner

But Everyone Else is Doing it

In my hasty post on last week’s FCPA sting operation my focus was on the aggressive use of an undercover operation to catch violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. That was big news. It’s the first time that’s happened. The indictments did not disclose the companies involved.

It’s now clear that this sting operation was much bigger deal. The Department of Justice went after an entire industry. Richard Cassin dug around and found that those arrested came from dozens of different companies. Small companies, big companies, private companies, public companies.

Twenty-one of the arrests happened at the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference (SHOT Show), “the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports and hunting industries.” The SHOT show attracts tens of thousands of people from across the US and the world, with 1,800 exhibitors covering 700,000 square feet.

The sting was clearly a statement that the Department of Justice is not going to take an excuse that “everyone else is doing it.”

It does not matter if greasing palms happens to be a common way to transact commerce in the industry. They are willing to take on an entire industry. They are willing to use undercover operations. They are willing to make a big splash at a big media event.

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