SOCIAL NET TIME SPENT AT WORK IS THEFT IN ANYBODYS LANGUAGE

A LANDSCAPE architect fired for overusing an email chat service has been found to have been unfairly dismissed. It is the latest case for Fair Work Australia that deals with internet and social media use in the workplace.

Richard O’Connor had been employed by Outdoor Creations, in Melbourne. He had resigned and was about to leave the job when he was abruptly sacked for more than ”3000 transactions on a chat line during work time”.

His employer claimed, after searching his computer, that he had been using the Google Mail chat service when he was supposed to be working.

Employer David Kirkpatrick said in a letter of termination that engaging in personal activities for such a period of time while at work was akin to the theft ”of hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of paid time”. Mr O’Connor denied using the chat service to the extent claimed.

The Fair Work Australia commissioner Anne Gooley said neither party had provided independent evidence about the net use. She said that while excessive use of social media during work hours may justify dismissal there was insufficient evidence to dismiss Mr O’Connor. He had also not been given an opportunity to respond before being sacked.

PAUL CEGLIA THE FACEBOOK SCAMMER???

Paul Ceglia, who says that a 2003 contract entitles him to half the Facebook holdings of the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, showed no deception on a polygraph test about his claim last week, his lawyers said in a court filing.

The June 11 test was disclosed in papers filed on Friday by Ceglia’s lawyers opposing Facebook’s request that it be allowed to immediately inspect the original of the alleged contract and the emails Ceglia claims he exchanged with Zuckerberg in 2003 and 2004, before being required to turn over any evidence to Ceglia.

“I respectfully suggest that Mark Zuckerberg undergo the same polygraph examination I have in order to expose who is really telling the truth,” Ceglia, 37, said in a sworn statement submitted on Friday to the federal court in Buffalo, New York, where his suit is pending.

In the filing, Ceglia’s lawyers asked the court to order both sides to turn over evidence to determine whether the contract is genuine, including all of Zuckerberg’s documents, emails and instant messages relating to Facebook before July 30, 2004. Ceglia asked the court to order both sides into mediation.

Ceglia hasn’t shown the original contract publicly or to representatives of Facebook. The two-page document is in a bank safe-deposit box in Hornell, New York, according to Ceglia’s lawyers.

Stake in Facebook

Ceglia claims he is entitled to a multibillion-dollar stake in Facebook. The closely held company may be worth $US69.3 billion, according to Sharespost.com, an online marketplace for investments in companies that aren’t publicly traded. Palo Alto, California-based Facebook runs the world’s biggest social networking site.

In its June 2 request, Facebook called Ceglia “a hustler” who has engaged in various swindles over the past several years. The company said Ceglia’s claimed contract is “an amateurish forgery” and the emails fabricated. Facebook argued it needed to examine the documents immediately to put an end to a fraud on the court.

“Ceglia’s lawsuit is a shell game, shifting and changing with every filing,” Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Facebook and Zuckerberg, said in a statement responding to Ceglia’s filing yesterday. “Ceglia does not dispute that he has a track record of forging documents to rip people off.”

‘Terrible toll’

Snyder said polygraphs are easily manipulated and routinely disregarded by courts.

“This case and the tactics of Mark and Facebook have taken and continue to take a terrible toll on me, my wife, our two sons, and even our parents,” Ceglia said in his sworn statement filed Friday. “I have been repeatedly called a liar in the press and in the papers filed by defendants in this action.”

Ceglia sat for the polygraph test on June 11 in the Erie County, New York, office of Michael Pliszka, who administered the test, according to the court papers.

“The questions asked during the polygraph examination were designed to determine whether Mr. Ceglia had fraudulently forged or doctored the agreement,” Pliszka said. “It is my opinion that the examination results are classified as ‘No Deception Indicated.’”

In his statement, Ceglia said he and Zuckerberg met in the lobby of a hotel in Boston on April 28, 2003, and signed the contract, which Ceglia prepared by cutting and pasting from two different forms.

Document testing

Ceglia’s lawyers proposed subjecting the original contract to testing, which would be conducted by a mutually agreed or court-appointed expert, to determine the age of the ink on the contract. The necessary tests would destroy part of the document, they said.

Included in Friday’s filing are the opinions of two document experts and a computer expert.

John Evans, a computer expert hired by Ceglia, said his firm took from him 169 floppy discs, 1075 compact discs and two computer hard drives. One of the floppy discs has three Microsoft Word documents containing copies of email correspondence between Ceglia and Zuckerberg. Ceglia said he copied the messages from his internet-based msn.com email.

In an amended complaint filed in April, Ceglia quoted from emails he said he exchanged with Zuckerberg, which he said support his claim that the two men formed a partnership that gave Ceglia half-ownership of Facebook when it was started in 2004.

Zuckerberg said in a court filing that Ceglia hired him in 2003 to do web-development services for StreetFax.com, a business Ceglia was trying to start at the time. Zuckerberg, then a student at Harvard University, signed a contract drafted by Ceglia, which referred only to the StreetFax work, he said. The contract made no mention of Facebook, which Zuckerberg started months later, he said.

Preteen girls charged

over Facebook sex prank

Two preteen US girls accused of hacking into a classmate’s Facebook page and posting sexually explicit photos and messages have been charged with cyberstalking and first-degree computer trespassing.

The girls, ages 11 and 12, have been under investigation since the alleged victim’s family contacted Issaquah police in Washington state on March 18, according to the charges filed in King County Juvenile Court. According to the charges, the two defendants used the victim’s password information to post sexually explicit content on her Facebook page.

They also posted messages that indicated the victim was willing to perform sex acts on people.

The defendants instant-messaged some boys to arrange dates where sex acts were to be performed by the victim, according to the charges.

Jon Knight, the stepfather of the 12-year-old alleged victim, said his family is relieved that the case has resulted in criminal charges. He said that he wasn’t taken seriously when he reported the incident to Issaquah police and to staff at Issaquah Middle School.

Knight said his stepdaughter, Leslie Cote, has asked the media to use her name in hopes of bringing attention to the issue of cyberstalking.

Issaquah police were called to the Cote-Knight home on March 18 after Leslie’s mother, Tara Cote, called to report vulgar postings on her daughter’s Facebook page, charges said. A woman who mentored Leslie told the family that she had noticed photos on the page had been changed to show Leslie with “devil’s horns” and with the words “I’m a slut” scrawled across one image, prosecutors said.

The alterations and postings apparently became more vulgar as the night progressed.

Prosecutors said that Leslie had been over at a defendant’s house in early March when she logged into Facebook. Leslie’s password information was somehow stored on the other girl’s computer.

After the girls had a falling out, the defendants hacked into the page “with the intent of embarrassing and tormenting the victim,” Issaquah police Detective Ryan Raulerson wrote in the affidavit of probable cause filed to support the charges.

Sara Niegowski, spokeswoman for the Issaquah School District, said Tuesday the district was not conducting its own investigation into the incident because it did not occur on school property. She said the defendants are still enrolled at Issaquah Middle School.

“This incident happened off-campus, off school time and not related to our school environments. There is no disciplinary action at all. It’s not a school district incident,” Niegowski said.

Niegowski said that the incident has not been a disruption at the school.

“You know what’s a disruption is the media coverage,” she said. “We always look out for the welfare of our students.”

Knight said that his stepdaughter has been granted a restraining order forbidding the defendants from contacting her and barring them from riding her school bus. The three girls are in some of the same classes, Knight said.

On Tuesday, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said, “This case reveals the dark side of social media sites used by young people.”

In a news release, Satterberg wrote: “Many kids think that on a social media site that their actions will be anonymous and that they are free to use it as weapon to bully, harass, and intimidate another person. This case demonstrates that assuming the identity of another person on the Internet with the intent to torment them and expose them to the harassment of others is a crime.”

MCT  

Facebook vandal jailed

The anti-social network:

boys jailed for $26m

‘Crimebook’ scam