A new government policy announced July 16, 2008 allows customs agents to conduct searches at the border of information contained in documents and electronic devices such as laptops and flash drives without suspicion of wrongdoing or unlawful activity. No distinction is made between Americans and foreigners. The policy allows Customs to search, copy, retain, and share information from computers, disks, hard drives, electronic or digital

storage devices, as well as documents, books, pamphlets, and other printed materials. Officers may detain documents and electronic devices for as long as they deem necessary and reasonable to perform a thorough search, either on or off site. The border can include the geographic borders as well as international points of entry such as airports and (sea) ports. Despite the new policy, there are some limits on the government’s broad powers at the border and you should know your rights. Customs may detain documents and/or devices for an unspecified “reasonable” amount of time, but permanent seizure requires probable cause of unlawful activity. International business travelers should be aware of the possibility that business confidential information and even documents subject to attorney-client privilege could be subject to border searches. International business travelers should be prepared for searches and should take necessary precautionary measures. Travelers concerned that business-confidential or privileged information could be examined by border officials may want to take precautionary steps to protect such information, including the following: • Establish secure, web-based document repositories that you or your business colleagues can use to access documents remotely. • Send electronic copies of documents prior to meetings, rather than carry them across the border in electronic or digital storage devices. • When information must be carried across the border, rather than storing it on the “desktop” of your computer, store it separately in portable storage devices such as memory sticks or flash drives that are labeled, where appropriate, “business confidential” or “attorney-client privileged.” Customs is authorized to view these documents, but identifying sensitive information may help to alert border officials to any special handling procedures that might be required, reducing the risk of inadvertent exposure of confidential information. Whereas Customs may “routinely” search business confidential information, the examination of “attorney-client” information requires reasonable suspicion and the advice of an Assistant Chief Counsel, thus giving it an extra layer of protection against arbitrary border inspection. • Consider turning off e-mail caching when traveling to other countries. Some programs such as Microsoft Outlook store or “cache” copies of e-mail messages on the laptop so that the e-mail messages are available for review while not connected to a computer network. Note that with caching turned off, you will not be able to read your e-mail without first connecting to the computer network. • Clear or delete web browser cache and delete “cookies” and passwords that may be stored on your laptop.

Here is the actual policy.

jd

Green is Good!

Recently, San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, signed an ordinance that requires employers to offer employees at least one of three commuter benefit options.

This is part of an effort to comply with California’s new AB 32 Carbon Emissions regulation act, designed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels. Under this legislation, employers will have a choice of three transit options:

1. Set up a program under which employees can make pretax contributions to the federal legal limit of $115 a month to pay for mass transit expenses,
2. Employers can directly pay for employees’ transportation expenses, such as buying transit passes for employees.
3. Employers can furnish transportation by setting up van pools for employees.

The ordinance will take effect in December 2008 and will apply to employers with at least 20 employees and will have to be offered to employees who work an average of at least 10 hours per week.

Look to San Francisco to set the trend for things to come.

The California court system recently rejected non-compete clauses.

California (and most other states) has historically had an environment that favors open competition and employee freedom. Non-Competes were just ruled illegal last week. Recruiters have found them problematic, because they have been used by employers, especially high tech companies, to restrict employees from moving to a perceived competitor. That’s no longer a problem. Most other states still allow non-competes, but it’s now expected that federal courts and other states will fall in line.

Confidential Information OK
While enabling the movement of employees between employers, the ruling still protects companies in that trade secrets and confidential information are still protected.

The case that led to this ruling is Edwards vs. Arthur Andersen, S147190, and is available at links.sfgate.com/ZELQ.

jd

Just when you thought it was safe to have a separate work/life existence, they find yet another way to keep you connected to the world!!! But don’t worry, at least this one is fun! What am I talking about? I’m talking about micro-blogging!

Micro-blogging can give your personal network constant updates regarding your status. These can be sent from anywhere in the world. The great thing about micro-blogging is that you probably use one of these tools already. Whether it’s Twitter, FriendFeed, your Facebook status, your cell phone’s SMS texts, or your Gtalk status. These are just a few examples, but the more important thing to think about is how you can connect these.

Some of these sites like Twitter, can receive text message updates from your phone. Are you running late and need to update your status message for your network to see? Send a text message from your phone to Twitter and it will automatically update it.

Other sites like FriendFeed allow you to share videos, photos, links, bookmarks, blogs, books, news, and status between your network. The major benefit to sites like these is the fact that you can set them up to share information, and then you only have worry about updating one website status! To illustrate this concept, I have enlisted the help from a friend of mine named Plugged-in Pete.

Click on the image below to see:

Now how can this be used in the world of recruiting? First of all, you can search status messages within a network or with some sites you can go beyond your network. This is still a relatively new medium, so there aren’t a lot of hard-lined rules yet. I also have another article that details how to search with Twitter.

Now, since some of these sites tie into SMS text applications, they must follow the 155 character limit for SMS text. Now how can you send super-long URL’s if you only get 155 characters for your message? The answer is with tinyurl’s. These 2 sites: tinyurl.com and snipurl.com allow you to take a long URL and save it as a very short URL. Now you can post that super-important YouTube Video or news article and not have to worry about space.

Stay tuned for future episodes of Plugged-in Pete and Recruiting Today.

- Mark

The use of Blackberry’s and enabling instant communication technologies such as PTT, email, Twitter, etc. has become ubiquitous.

If we strictly interpret FLSA OT rules its clear that non-exempts warrant compensation for work related use out of normal work hours. In other words, if your non-exempt Scheduler gets a response from a candidate for an interview appointment and answers it via Blackberry email at 7:00 pm tonight or over the weekend, did he/she just put in OT? California and FLSA law says the answer is yes.

How can the employer curb liabilities?
Suggested approaches involve very clear guidelines for employee use of such devices for work related purposes and differentiating use of such devices for personal vs. required and critical business purposes. Clear statements such as non-exempt employees are not authorized to use cell phone or PDA communication technologies for business purposes out of the “normal” 8-5 hours are necessary.

This may be just one more argument to curb the subsidy of cell phones by employers for employee use. The argument would be that if the company does not pay for the phone, they must not be doing company work when looking at their phone or email.

This is not an issue for most exempt employees, because neither FLSA nor California’s stricter additional guidelines apply to exempts. But it may be an issue for some of the marginal exempt non-exempt job categories such as Computer Programmers, Software Engineers, HTML Web Programmers, Gamers and Sys Admins at the lower level.

The bottom line
You should take a look at your policies and ask yourself, how well has the company guarded the purse strings in the area of Blackberry use and overtime? There’s a need to revise our overtime laws in the State and Country to recognize the prevalence of these communication technologies, and to allow for some employer flexibility so they don’t get charged to death every time the employee does something work related for two seconds out of the normal work hours.

The reality is work life balance in the Silicon Valley is a myth. It’s not that we are killing ourselves by working 24/7, but instead the recognition that things have changed in both how and when we work. 50 years ago when my dad worked in the factory for 8 hours that’s what he did. Today, many of our factories are cubes, workspaces, and many of us spend time surfing the net, replying to personal calls and emails in the same mix as all the work related business. I don’t see anybody passing legislation saying we can deduct the time when people are not applying themselves to work for the 8+ hours they spend at the office. It’s time for new legislation in this space to recognize the new way of working

jd