We hear a lot about how much energy modern day flat screen TV sets consume, but the innocuous set-top boxes that drive them, along with their built-in digital video recorders, may be even more to blame. A recent analysis conducted by the consulting firm Ecos on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) found that “the average new cable high-definition digital video recorder (HD-DVR) consumes more than half the energy of an average new refrigerator and more than an average new flat-panel television.” Overall, set-top boxes in the U.S. consume some 27 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equal to the annual output of six average (500 megawatt) coal-fired power plants and accounts for the emission of 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Part of the reason these boxes are such energy hogs is that they typically operate at nearly full power even during the two-thirds of the time when they are not actively in use driving TV screens or recording to built-in DVRs. “As a nation, we spend $2 billion each year to power these boxes when they are not being actively used,” reports NRDC.

To make matters worse, American consumers have little if any choice about which set-top boxes they get from their cable or satellite service providers. Since the providers usually own the boxes yet don’t have to pay consumers’ electric bills, they have little incentive to utilize or develop more efficient models. In Europe, Sky Broadcasting is beginning to distribute more efficient equipment to subscribers there. NRDC is urging the largest pay-TV service providers in the U.S. (Comcast, Time Warner, DirecTV, Dish Network, Verizon and AT&T) to heed the efficiency call with their own set-top box and DVR offerings.

Redesigning set-top boxes to power down when not in use is perhaps the biggest opportunity for energy savings. “Innovation to reduce power consumption when not in active use—such as has occurred with mobile phones, which also work on a subscriber basis and require secure connections—is sorely needed in set-top boxes,” counsels NRDC. Also, re-jiggering content delivery systems so that only one main set-top box sends signals to all the televisions in the house (or to lower power “thin client” boxes) could also cut down household electric bills and carbon footprints. The group adds that “better designed pay-TV set-top boxes could reduce the energy use of the installed base of boxes by 30 percent to 50 percent by 2020.”

Last year the U.S. government released new energy efficiency standards for set-top boxes within its EnergyStar appliance efficiency rating program. While this new specification is a step in the right direction, consumers have little knowledge about such options. NRDC urges pay-TV subscribers to request that their providers make available set-top boxes and DVRs that meet the newer EnergyStar 4.0 standards. The more of us that request such improvements, the likelier they are to happen. And the cable or satellite provider that can save customers money while reducing overall environmental impact may just win over an increasingly large sector of the American people that actually cares about being green.

Photo: iStockPhoto/Thinkstock

EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe. Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

The federal government’s National Labor Relations Board continues to probe the pitfalls of social media in the workplace.

The limits of workplace rules and of employee behavior are “a ‘hot topic’ among practitioners, human resource professions, the media, and the public,” noted acting general counsel Lafe Solomon in a recent report.

Business Ethics previously examined the NLRB’s social media approach last August.

The NLRB’s new year-end survey of 14 recent unfair labor practice cases cited several instances where employers adopted “overly broad” policies in attempting to police use of social media at work or online, even though, in some cases the discipline or discharge of an employee was legal.

Several cases arose from employee rants and protests posted on Facebook, where disciplinary steps were upheld because the worker’s behavior wasn’t considered “protected concerted conduct,” a common issue in NLRB cases.  Employees, the latest memo noted, have a “right to discuss their wages and other terms and conditions of employment, both among themselves and with non-employees.”

“Overbroad social media policies are high on the NLRB’s current enforcement agenda,” says global law firm Ropes and Gray.  The firm’s analysis said “employers who wish to restrict their employees’ use of social media must take care to specify the precise types of communications that will violate their social media policy, and avoid using broad, generic terms that could be understood to reach protected communication and activity.  This includes such commonplace terms as ‘inappropriate’ or ‘defamatory’ ……”

Just blowing off steam via Facebook doesn’t get much sympathy at the NLRB.  Consider:

--a bartender complained on Facebook that another bartender was “screwing over” customers by substituting a pre-made mix for more expensive premium liquor, and fretted that the practice could lose business.  Eventually, the complainer was discharged for using “unprofessional communication” on Facebook.  The NLRB legal staff didn’t think the behavior was linked closely enough to working conditions for the discharge to be illegal.

--a respiratory therapist at a children’s hospital, riding in an ambulance with a paramedic coworker, posted  via cell phone a Facebook message “indicating that it was driving her nuts that her coworker was sucking her teeth.”  After two Facebook ‘friends’ commiserated online, the therapist said “she was about to beat him with a ventilator,” the NLRB summary said.

The coworker complained to the company, and the therapist was eventually disciplined for that and other behavior.  The NLRB legal staff found labor laws didn’t offer her protection because “it did not concern terms and conditions of employment. She was merely complaining about the sounds her coworker was making, and was not even suggesting that the Employer could do anything about it.”

--a warehouse worker who was feeling ill was told by his supervisor that he could leave but he would be charged an attendance point; the worker completed his shift, but, from his car in the parking lot, posted a Facebook comment saying it was too bad when your boss doesn’t care about your health.  And he told a ‘friend’ who expressed support that he (the worker) thought the company was, in the NLRB’s words, “just trying to give him a reason to be fired because he was about ‘a hair away from setting it off.’ "

He was subsequently suspended without pay and later discharged for inappropriate, threatening, and violent remarks.  An HR manager said she interpreted the ‘setting it off’ remark as a threat to bring a gun to the warehouse and shoot everyone in it.  The NLRB concluded the employee wasn’t trying to initiate group action over sick leave policies and noted he had “characterized his conduct as ‘just venting.’ "

On the other hand, some Facebook discussions do fall under protection of the labor laws:

--workers at a popcorn packaging plant commented on Facebook about the behavior of an operations manager.  One said she hated the place and couldn’t wait to get out of there; eventually, one of the workers was discharged for the comments about the manager.  But the NLRB reviewers said the comments were “part of a discussion of employees’ shared concerns about terms and conditions of employment.”  The memo noted “it is well established that employee complaints and criticism about a supervisor’s attitude and performance may be protected” by the labor laws.

--a nurse at a hospital where a discharged employee had killed one supervisor and critically wounded another posted a series of critical messages online during a seven-month period.  He also criticized the hospital’s “management style” in a local newspaper and in other forums, and made a critical presentation to a borough assembly.  He was terminated. The NLRB staff found that many of the nurse’s remarks amounted to the sort of “rhetorical hyperbole” that is protected under labor laws.

And the NLRB memo criticized a number of rules for 30,000 employees at a large clinical testing laboratory, labeling the provisions “overbroad.”  Among them:

--Language that prohibited prohibited employees from disclosing or communicating sensitive, confidential or non-public information about the company without prior approval of senior management or the law department.

--A provision prohibiting use of the company’s name or service marks outside the course of business without prior approval of the law department.

--A prohibition against publishing any representation about the company without prior approval by senior management and the law department, including statements to the media, ads, weblogs and voice mail.

--A requirement that social networking site communications be made in an honest, professional and appropriate manner.

--A provision saying employees needed approval to identify themselves as the employer’s employees and that that social media comments must expressly be labeled as personal opinions that don’t necessarily reflect the employer’s opinions.

Spoiler alert: This article discusses key scenes from the film.

J.C. Chandor has embraced Rahm Emanuel's dictum "never let a serious crisis go to waste." The 37-year-old writer and director used the financial crisis as a springboard to create the most insightful Wall Street movie ever filmed. Margin Call captures a day in the life of a Lehman Brothers-like bank as it scrambles to avoid falling into the first cracks of the financial crisis. Briskly paced and marvelously acted, the movie reveals how large financial institutions operate and the motivations of the people who work within them.

Margin Call should not be confused with journalism. It is not a precise overlay of the financial crisis. You'll never hear the words collateralized debt obligations uttered in the movie. As the reporting I did with my colleague Jesse Eisinger showed, the Wall Street behavior that helped create the financial crisis was often much worse than what's depicted in the movie. Chandor isn't looking for villians or lengthy explanations. He's mining deeper truths than the intricacies of credit default swaps. The societal costs of high finance, the power of self-rationalization, and the easy embrace of personal corruption is his terrain.

As reporters covering the beat know, Wall Street is a reluctant participant in introspection. Journalists investigating the Street have to pierce a code of omertà, borne of the fear of lawsuits and federal investigations. No one wants to have the reputation of being a snitch in an industry where hiring and bonuses are based on relationships as much as quarterly results. The truth is even more tightly held when it hides the origins of financial disaster, but even in the best of times, these are not, by nature, navel gazers. Traders and market makers are like sharks, always wanting to move forward, onto the next deal. There is no percentage in looking back.

All you need to know about the moral universe Margin Call inhabits is on display in the opening scene of the movie. The downturn has begun. The firing squad -- represented by two women in identical business suits -- arrives on the trading floor trailed by underlings carrying cardboard boxes to cart away personal effects. When they come into view, a series of swift reactions plays across the face of Will Emerson, a senior trader acted brilliantly by Paul Bettany. First fear. Then dismay. And finally, relief and dismissal. After 80 percent of the floor is axed, Emerson's boss, Sam, a wan Kevin Spacey, gives a pep talk to the traders left standing. "They were good. You are better. Now they are gone. They are not to be thought of again."

Among the casaulties is the risk manager for the trading group, Eric Dale, played by Stanley Tucci. On the way out the door, Dale tells his young protege, Peter Sullivan, that he has been working on something important. As the elevator closes, he hands Sullivan a zip drive and says cryptically, "Be careful."

Sullivan, played by Zachary Quinto, who also helped produce the movie, waits until the office clears for the night and then dives into the figures. To his horror, he discovers the bank is massively overleveraged. If trends continue, projected losses are much greater than the value of the firm. Upon learning how dire the situation has become, the CEO John Tuld, portrayed by a scene-chewing Jeremy Irons, says, "So what you are telling me is that the music is about to stop and we are going to be left holding the biggest bag of oderous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism."

Sullivan is the questioning heart of Margin Call. He has a doctorate in engineering with a speciality in propulsion -- literally a rocket scientist. And like so many of the best and brightest of his generation, he turned to Wall Street, where Chandor clearly believes his gain is society's loss. When one of his superiors asks Sullivan why he has foresaken engineering, he responds: "It's all just numbers really, just changing what you are adding up, and to speak freely, the money here is considerably more attractive."

Sullivan operates in the constricted space of the Wall Street risk manager. Risk managers and accountants are among the few who actually know what the numbers mean. They see the whole picture. It's a running joke through the movie that Sullivan's bosses, right up to the CEO, don't understand the financial wizardry behind the products they make and sell. When confronted with Sullivan's analysis, Sam says, "Oh Jesus, you know I can't read these things. Just speak to me in English."

The risk manager is not in sales, which is the heart and soul of the institution. He or she only offers recommendations. Throughout Margin Call there are a number of references to warnings unheeded. And indeed, in the real world, the success of investment banks at subverting their risk management rules correlated nicely with how badly they fared when the crisis hit. In the ultimate irony, when it's time for someone to take the fall for the firm's risk taking, it's the head of risk management, played by Demi Moore who is pushed to the scaffold.

Sullivan and his side-kick Seth, played by Penn Badgley, are still new enough to the system to be doubtful of its utility. Seth is enamored with the money Wall Street offers and particularly impressed by his boss Will Emerson, who pulled down $2.5 million the previous year. They briefly wonder whether that's "right," but push the unwelcome thought away unanswered.

When Emerson tells the eager young men that "you learn to spend what is in your pocket" and that most of his money is gone, they are incredulous. He itemizes his expenses for them, including $76,520 for hookers, booze and dancers. Their adulation only increases when he admits he claimed most of that back as entertainment expenses.

Later when Seth bemoans the fact that normal people will be hurt by their actions, Emerson's ferocious response is shocking both for its amorality and its kernels of truth.

"If you really want to do this with your life you have to believe that you're necessary. And you are. People want to live like this in their cars and their big fucking houses that they can't even pay for? Then you're necessary. The only reason they all get to continue living like kings is because we've got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and the whole world gets really fucking fair really fucking quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what we have to give them, but they also want to play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. That's more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow. Fuck them. Fuck normal people."

Faced with the pile of excrement on the books, the archly named Tuld (Lehman Brothers CEO was Dick Fuld) decides the bank must unload it, and quickly, before customers wise up. At this point, the movie could just as easily be called, "Damage Control: When Greed Turns to Fear."

Sam tries to talk Tuld out of his plan. "If you do this, you will kill the market for years. It's over. And you are selling something that you know has no value," he says.

Tuld responds with the excuse every Wall Street executive used when investigators came calling after the shit hit the investors: "We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price so that we may survive."

In the real world, the buyers were not as sophisticated and the deals not as transparant as bankers claimed.

The House always wins, Emerson tells his young charges. The corollary is that everybody is for sale. Indeed, anyone who has qualms in the movie finds the right price for their acquiesence. In this world, traders earn bonuses for screwing their customers. Tucci's character is told he can lose his health care and stock options -- or keep them while sitting quietly in a room for a day at $176,476 an hour. "It didn't seem like much of a choice," he says.

Beyond the sheer entertainment value of the movie, Chandor's biggest coup is his willingness to indict a system rather than simply blame the individuals within it. Ultimately, Margin Call is the story of a Wall Street that has evolved from an economic helpmate to an economic predator.

In April 2011, Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for a series of stories on questionable Wall Street practices that helped make the financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

The road map keeping track of social media charges and complaints at the National Labor Relations Board is getting more interesting and complicated.

The agency’s interest in legal issues posed by comments on websites such as Facebook and Twitter first drew wide attention last year. An NLRB regional office said it planned to file an unfair labor practice complaint against an ambulance company for firing an employee who posted negative Facebook comments about her supervisor.  (The case was settled early this year when the company agreed to revise its rules to ensure it didn’t improperly restrict employees from discussing wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers and others while not at work.  The dismissal was handled in a separate private agreement.)

Now, a new report from the NLRB’s Acting General Counsel, and a survey of NLRB cases by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce disclose a much broader range of social media situations being examined at the agency.

The Chamber’s report, based on a Freedom of Information Act request, turned up more than 129 cases “involving social media in some way. While most of these cases are at the very initial stage, and may not be meritorious at all, some are more advanced,” the Chamber said.

The survey found two Board decisions involving social media, as well as two decisions by administrative law judges.  The Board’s general counsel has issued complaints in four other cases, as well as ten memoranda on social media.

The NLRB’s Acting General Counsel, in mid-August, released a report reviewing the outcome of investigations into 14 cases involving use of social media as well as employers’ media policies.

In four cases, the NLRB’s Division of Advice found that employees using Facebook were engaged in “protected concerted activity” in discussing terms and conditions of employment; in five other cases, the activity wasn’t protected.

Employers aren’t the only subject of Board inquiries. “In one case, it was determined that a union engaged in unlawful coercive conduct when it videotaped interviews with employees at a nonunion jobsite about their immigration status and posted an edited version on YouTube and the Local Union’s Facebook page.”

The Chamber’s report was first brought to our attention via an article by Michael C. Schmidt, a member of the law firm Cozen O’Connor.  Mr. Schmidt says the survey raises five important points:

-- Issues before the NLRB aren’t limited to union facilities

-- Overbroad employer policies “apparently have been problematic for the NLRB.  Not everything is inappropriate for a social media policy, and the NLRB will not deem every social media policy to be violative of the law.”

-- “How you handle and seek to resolve whatever action you take will go a long way in determining the outcome of an NLRB complaint.”

-- Firms need appropriate monitoring policies and practices. “There is a big difference between public postings and surreptitious discovery.”

-- “No quick triggers” in reacting to social media events. “Companies still appear to be more sensitive to (and, therefore, more likely to react more quickly to) social media activity.”

The Chamber report summary found the most common social media issues at the NLRB involve “overbroad policies restricting employee use of social media or that an employer unlawfully discharged or disciplined one or more employees over contents of social media posts.”

In addition, the NLRB has examined whether an employer bargained with an existing union over social media policy, as well as union communications involving social media.

The Chamber report noted that the Division of Advice has found in at least six cases that social media posts weren’t protected activities protected by the National Labor Relations Act.   One case involved “mere griping.” In another, “an employee was demoted after posting that he expressed his desire for the employer’s building to collapse during an earthquake while members of management were inside. The region determined that the comments could reasonably be considered to be disloyal and were unrelated to working conditions.”

Eric B. Meyer, an attorney with the law firm Dilworth Paxson LLP, reviewed the NLRB report and concluded, among other things:

-- Except in very limited circumstances, you can’t discipline employees who discuss workplace responsibilities and performance together online.

-- You can’t discipline any employee who seeks input online from a co-worker about a dispute at work.

-- You can’t discipline an employee for clicking the “Like” button on Facebook.

-- You can’t discipline an employee who continues the course of concerted activity that began in the workplace by vocalizing the sentiments of his co-workers online.

NewsCorp executive and scion James Murdoch, the man who oversaw the News of the World (NOTW), said the leadership of the now shuttered British tabloid "failed to get to the bottom of repeated wrongdoing that occurred without conscience or legitimate purpose." But many wonder, amid a parade of arrests and revelation, whether the phone hacking and bribery at NOTW are truly the actions of one NewsCorp enterprise or an example of the company's overall corporate culture.

Events to date demonstrate that even experienced messengers, like those at NewsCorp, can struggle when the spotlight turns on them. This is why a recent report by the Ethics Resource Center's Fellows program -- Accepting Responsibility Responsibly: Corporate Response in Times of Crisis -- advised Boards to put a crisis plan in place before disaster strikes.

But for the Murdochs and their executive team, the time for planning ahead has passed. Now investigators, elected officials, and the general public rightfully want to know why the families of murder victims and soldiers were targeted by hackers. However contrite or creative its explanations for past acts, this is the time for NewsCorp to build a new corporate conscience. NewsCorp is now literally fighting for its life. The best defense, as we have seen with companies that have survived such crises, is not to spin its story, but to start writing a new one.

But when asked by Members of Parliament if editors at other NewsCorp operations were reviewing their newsrooms to insure NOTW-type tactics were not being replicated, Rupert Murdoch answered "No, but I am more than prepared to do so." The future of NewsCorp depends on just how prepared Mr. Murdoch really is. That review is just as critical as any other measure to NewsCorp uses to restore its name.

To address the growing perception this problem reaches well beyond one paper, the company must revisit and reassert its corporate values. NewsCorp must spell out for every employee the core belief, from its very own standards of conduct that "Compliance with the law is crucial to the reputation of NewsCorp and its business units." The challenge is making clear those are not just words on a page.

NewsCorp must go beyond the newsroom, and into the boardroom, to create real reform.

Our research suggests that NewsCorp can restore its good standing by embracing some cornerstone measures:

• Publicly reaffirm the primacy of its "Standards of Business Conduct" as the foundation for employee conduct all the way to the Executive Suite and provide employees. Live up to them.
• Set a tone at the top that consistently reinforces these values through both words and deeds. Tell employees, shareholders, and customers how company standards are guiding your decisions during this crisis.
• Hold accountable individuals at every level of the organization who have violated standards of professional conduct. Employees need to see that your company will conduct a fair investigation to identify the individuals who have been involved in this scandal.
• Renew attention to organizational culture and root out mixed messages or subtle signals that might open the door to misconduct.

Not only can such measures restore public respect, but our 2009 National Business Ethics Survey® found that good conduct becomes self-reinforcing. In a strong ethical culture where employees are more committed to the company, workplace misconduct can be reduced by as much as 50%.

Full-page newspaper ads and even personal apologies to the victims of this scandal look impressive. But post-recession consumers, who are more aware of the character of a parent company than ever before, are unlikely to be persuaded by gestures. Real recovery for NewsCorp will take time, discipline, and a concrete, top down commitment to ethical business conduct.

Patricia J. Harned is President of ERC, which recently published Accepting Responsibility Responsibly, a report on how ethical values can guide an organization through crisis.   This article was originally published on the Huffington Post and is republished with permission.

The embattled media conglomerate News Corporation and its independent directors have not only hired top criminal defense lawyers, they’ve also hired former Justice Department prosecutors well-versed in U.S. bribery law.

The new hires are a sign that the company is taking the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation—and the potential that the inquiry may turn specifically to bribery—rather seriously. (Read our story on why News Corp. may have good reason to worry.)

The company has hired Mark Mendelsohn, who until last year was the Justice Department’s top enforcer of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—and an aggressive one, at that.

Here’s FCPA expert Richard Cassin, writing on the FCPA Blog about Mendelsohn’s enforcement record:

Mendelsohn's view of the FCPA and American anti-corruption policy wasn't complicated. He pushed enforcement against corporations of any size and from any country. … He also led the government's charge against individual FCPA defendants—among them KBR's Jack Stanley, entrepreneur Frederic Bourke, and the 22 shot-show defendants.

As the UK’s Guardian notes, a full investigation of possible FCPA violations would likely drag other News Corp. subsidiaries into the mess—a costly and time-consuming process, but one that Mendelsohn will be able to help the company navigate.

The company’s independent directors, meanwhile, have hired former federal prosecutor Mary Jo White, who in 2007 conducted a major internal investigation of Siemens when it faced bribery allegations. News Corp. has also hired former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who in addition to having experience with internal investigations also has an unusual connection to the FCPA.

As we've noted, Mukasey was hired in March as a lobbyist for the Institute for Legal Reform, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. His lobbying registration shows he’s working specifically to roll back aggressive enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The inquiry into News Corp. is still very early. So far the Justice Department has said that the FBI, in response to media reports and a request from lawmakers, is investigating whether News Corp. tried to hack into the voicemails of 9/11 victims and whether its payments to U.K. law enforcement violated the FCPA.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

Though News of the World shut its doors on Sunday, the UK's hacking scandal is deepening. Allegations of illegal activity have spread beyond News of the World to other Murdoch papers, and far beyond hacking into people's voice mails. With all the new details emerging, it's getting hard to keep track. Here's a brief rundown of the latest revelations. (For an explanation of the early days of the phone hacking scandal, see the chronology that follows this article.)

The News of the World drew fresh outrage last week as news broke that the family members of dead soldiers , murdered children, and 7/7 terrorist attack victims may have had their phones hacked by the paper. There have also been allegations that the paper hacked the email account of a soldier who died in Iraq.

Scotland Yard has been combing through 11,000 pages of documents seized from the home of Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who hacked phones for News of the World. The papers include around 4,000 names of potential phone hacking victims. Investigators are working through the list and contacting the victims -- as of yesterday, they'd only gotten in touch with 170 of them. Meanwhile, a News International senior executive is suspected of deleting "massive quantities" of phone hacking-related emails.

The Guardian reported yesterday that private investigators hired by News International papers targeted former Prime Minister Gordon Brown over the past decade, attempting to access his bank account, legal files, tax forms, and his son's medical records. News International today denied that they had "commissioned" anyone to access the son's medical records. Though it's still unknown exactly how this information was accessed, these revelations could implicate other News International papers, particularly The Sun and The Sunday Times.

Since late June, investigators have been trying to identify which Scotland Yard officers reportedly received a total of £100,000 in bribes from News of the World between 2003 and 2007. Yesterday, reports came out alleging that the News of the World bribed police officers in order to obtain contact information for members of the royal family. Scotland Yard accused News International in a press release of intentionally leaking this information to the press to undermine their investigation. (As we've reported, if they did in fact make these bribes, Murdoch employees have violated U.S. law.)

Today's New York Times also reports that top Scotland Yard investigators' phones had been hacked during the initial police inquiry in 2006, raising questions about whether police limited the scope of their now-famously flawed investigation for fear that News of The World might start airing their dirty laundry. According to the New York Times, some investigators' secrets did indeed make it into the media:

The lead police investigator on the phone-hacking case, Andy Hayman, left the Metropolitan Police in December 2007 after questions were raised in the news media about business expenses he had filed and the nature of his relationship with a woman who worked for the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

At the time, Channel 4 News [not owned by Murdoch] reported details of 400 text messages and phone calls that Mr. Hayman had sent to her.

John Yates, the assistant commissioner who has become a lightning rod for the police's handling of the phone-hacking case, had reportedly used frequent flier miles earned in the line of duty to pay for flights for his relatives.

Through all this, News Corporation has been gearing up to take over British Sky Broadcasting Group, also known as BSkyB. News Corp currently owns over a third of the company. The New York Times breaks down the details of the BSkyB deal and the actions Murdoch took this week to help its chances for survival. Parliament is expected to pass a resolution tomorrow opposing the takeover, but it would have no legal effect.

Though the weekly News of the World has closed, Murdoch's Sun seems geared to expand their operations to Sundays, raising concerns that the closing is merely symbolic.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband are meeting tonight to discuss the details of an inquiry into the way the original police investigation was conducted, and a review of the UK's current system of self-regulation of the press. Currently, an independent body called the Press Complaints Commission exists as an arbiter to help the press regulate itself, and to maintain national standards of journalistic ethics in the UK. (Our managing editor wrote last week that "press commissions have never worked well" in the U.S.)

For breaking developments on the scandal, one of the best places to turn is The Guardian's live blog -- they've been out in front of this story since 2009. We're also constantly adding stories about new developments to our MuckReads feature, which collects the best watchdog reporting. Here are all the phone hacking stories.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

A brief chronology of the story thus far:

July 7, 3:20 p.m.: Rupert Murdoch2019s News International just announced its decision to close News of the World, the paper that's been accused of hiring private investigators to hack into cell phones and staging a widespread cover-up to conceal it.

We've invited two esteemed journalists who've been covering the story to guest edit our #MuckReads feature for the day: Don Van Natta, Jr. (@dvnjr), investigative reporter at the New York Times, and Sarah Ellison (@sarahlellison), contributing editor at Vanity Fair. They've been sharing the most essential reporting about the scandal and their thoughts on why each piece is significant. It2019s a great resource for those just coming to the story to get oriented.

Here's a brief summary to get you started:

The scandal goes back to 2005 (The Guardian has a useful timeline of the whole affair; here's another from the Times), when Prince William and members of the royal staff suspected their voice mail was being tampered with and asked Scotland Yard to investigate. If you're wondering how that's even possible, the New York Times has an explanation of how phone hacking works.

In 2006, News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and a private investigator named Glenn Mulcaire were arrested and charged with hacking the cell phones. The two men served some jail time, and the editor of News of the World resigned. Scotland Yard and the U.K. Press Complaints Commission, an independent body that oversees the self-regulation of the press, conducted inquiries that didn2019t result in any shocking new findings. The story died down.

In July 2009, an investigative report by the Guardian's Nick Davies drew fresh attention to the case. Davies found that, far from being a one-off event, the phone hacking had been more widespread2014and that the paper had made massive payoffs to keep the story quiet. Ellison notes in #MuckReads that the payoffs were the News of the World's first and fatal step into denial that has led them to their untenable position today.201D

In response, the Press Complaints Commission criticized the Guardian's story, saying that there was no evidence the hacking was more widespread than News of the World initially said.

As court cases began to reveal new details about the extent of the phone hacking, a September 2010 story in the New York Times raised questions about how much News of the World editors and reporters knew and why Scotland Yard hadn't been very aggressive in pursuing the case. Van Natta Jr., one of the three Times reporters on the story, recalls a top Scotland Yard investigator's defense of the weak police response: "We were not going to set off on a cleanup of the British media."

In April, Scotland Yard opened up a new investigation and arrested a former News of the World editor and two reporters. In a June Vanity Fair piece, Ellison took a broad look at the scandal, looking at what's at stake and how this kind of thing could have happened.

This week, the Guardian reported that the News of the World had hacked into the voice mail of a murdered school girl and deleted some messages, triggering calls for a public inquiry.

Here's a list of the reported phone hacking victims so far and a round-up of phone hacking-related denials.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

Imagine you're a Fleet Street reporter at a British tabloid with a pocketful of cash. You meet a trusted source at a pub, a police officer who tells you about the royal family's confidential schedule in exchange for a small gratuity. You hand over a few quid and rush off with a photographer to stake out a health club where Camilla Parker-Bowles is toning her abs.

Guess what: If you work for Rupert Murdoch, you may have violated U.S. law. What the government nails you for could depend on how you and your bosses account for the sketchy deal with the cop.

If you're entirely honest in the company's internal books and enter the payment as a "bribe," you've just created an irrefutable piece of evidence that can be used against you and your company in a prosecution by the Justice Department for violating U.S. statutes against overseas bribery. If, as is more likely, you file an expense account which refers to the cash payment as "taxis" or "office supplies," you stand a chance of being pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for keeping fake records.

News International Limited, the British arm of the Murdoch empire, is a subsidiary of News Corp., a publicly traded American company which also owns The Wall Street Journal and Fox News (not to mention the Sunday Times of London, The Times of London, and the British tabloid The Sun.) Because of this, experts say, News Corp. and all of its subsidiaries come under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a Watergate-era law which makes it a crime for U.S. companies to participate in bribery abroad.

The scope and number of payments remains unclear. British press reports say more than $160,000 was paid by News of the World reporters to police officers. The issue came to light last week after News International turned over a trove of internal emails to authorities.

"A small number of officers may have taken illegal payments. That is fundamentally corrupt," Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson told the BBC. "If true, I will be determined to root them out, find them and put them in front of the criminal court."

After years of relative quiet, the United States has substantially stepped up the resources to prosecute companies for violating the bribery law. There are 150 open investigations of American companies, according to the law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. In 2005, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice combined for a total of just 12 FCPA enforcement actions. By 2010 that number had jumped to 54, the law firm reports. We've written previously on this subject when it involved payments by Albert Jack Stanley , a former executive at KBR.

Unless information emerges that News Corp. executives in the United States were aware and condoned illegal behavior, it is doubtful whether the company or individual executives would face criminal prosecution in the United States, several defense lawyers said.

A prominent academic, Michael Koehler, who tracks prosecutions on his blog the FCPA Professor , is not as sure the global news giant will escape criminal prosecution.

"Look at the 2011 enforcement actions on my blog," he says. "None of these involved high level officers or board members."

But lack of evidence of executive complicity in bribery doesn't protect the parent company from civil actions. Where News Corp. may be most vulnerable is under the "Books and Records" and "Internal Controls" provisions of the FCPA, according to lawyers who practice in this field.

Even if News Corp. subsidiaries recorded the bribes accurately in their books, it could land the company in difficulty with the SEC. Since the bribery was permitted in the first place, the charges would also open up the company to questions about its internal controls.

Fines for these violations can be steep. In 2009 and 2010 combined the Justice Department charged over 50 individuals and collected nearly $2 billion in criminal fines, said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer in a recent speech. In 2010, the SEC brought in almost $530 million in corporate FCPA settlements, according to Koehler's blog. Part of what makes it so lucrative for the government is that the SEC often requires the companies "disgorge" the gains they made from illicit activities and pay interest on them.

How the SEC would calculate the value of a scoop or a racy headline that resulted from a police bribe is an open question. Does one include a bump in weekly circulation? The long-time loyalty of readers? Until it was abruptly closed last week, The News of the World, the Sunday paper most closely linked to phone hacking, had Britain's largest daily circulation, with 2.7 million readers.

"What was the increased revenue because of this sensational headline is more art than science," says Koehler. "You could come up with some ballpark number."

Another cost to News Corp. would be the company-wide review the SEC or DOJ would likely demand. The company would have to satisfy the Feds that similar payments weren't made to government officials in other countries. These company reviews are part of the reason why FCPA inquiries can last for years, according to Koehler.

The statute of limitations on civil FCPA charges is five years. Reports about the illegal bribes seem to date back to 2006 so regulators would likely be mindful of the calendar. Companies are often rewarded for cooperating with the inquiries. "Raising a statute of limitations defense is not exactly cooperation mode," says Koehler.

News Corp also depends on the government for its broadcast licenses. Fox Television Stations Inc. has 269 active licenses with the Federal Communications Commission, according to the agency's website. An agency spokesman would not comment on whether FCPA violations might put those licenses in jeopardy as well.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

When the Egyptian government created a partial communications blackout on Thursday, shutting Internet and cell-phone service, it asked for the cooperation of foreign mobile phone companies. UK-based Vodafone complied, saying it had no choice but to cut service.

In a statement issued Saturday, Vodafone said the Egyptian government would have been able to shut the network itself anyway, all within the bounds of Egyptian law. Mobinil, another major provider, which is owned in part by France Telecom, also complied.

Did they have any choice?

"We don't know," said Cynthia Wong, of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "Certainly it shows how much leverage governments have over mobile phone companies in particular."

Other reports suggest the government, at least in Egypt, likely could have shut down the system whether providers cooperated or not. The website Computerworld reported that while there is no "kill switch" that would shut all service, a government could physically sabotage equipment or worse. As Computerworld put it, "a government that licenses a mobile authority can threaten violence to individual cell towers or backhaul networks, or to employees working for the carrier."

Vodafone may have been implying that Egypt would do just that if the company didn't comply, saying a government shutdown would have meant a longer shutdown. Computerworld also reported that France Telecom withdrew about 20 foreign employees from the country.

While governments have implemented partial shutdowns of telecommunications before, in Iran and China, the scale of Egypt's actions are unprecedented, Wong said. And with activists increasingly organizing through texts and Twitter, she said, more countries are likely to do the same in the future.

Multinational corporations may have little recourse when a government decides to shut down all service, but a number of companies, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! are trying to organize against such intrusions through the Global Network Initiative. The group, which includes advocacy organizations and investors as well, says increasing pressure from governments has led them to come up with a set of guiding principles to "protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy" in the telecom sector. It aims to help companies come up with a plan for how to deal with situations like what's happening in Egypt before it occurs.

With interruptions of service in Egypt, it's hard to tell how widespread and successful the crackdown has been. There was at least one report of BlackBerry users finding a way around the blocks. One Internet service provider reportedly held out for days before shutting down by Monday. And while cell service had supposedly resumed after the weekend, CNN reports the government has shut it again temporarily.

It's also unclear whether the Egyptian government had a legal basis for its actions, as Vodafone claimed. But Wong said that if even if there were some law that allowed the crackdown, it would run counter to international human-rights principles.

"There are a set of human-rights norms around when governments can restrict free flow of information," she said. "I would say this is pretty close to a violation."

Update: Egyptian internet and cell providers reportedly began restoring service Wednesday morning, at least in parts of the country.

Photo by Frame Maker, courtesy Flickr

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

by James Hyatt

So your company hasn't had an OMG moment over Facebook ethics?

As they say, Good Luck With That.

It has been almost a decade since Congress passed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron, Tyco and WorldCom scandals, seeking to put in place a variety of measures to protect investors and address standards of behavior. Over the years, once-controversial practices about disclosure and ethics have become generally accepted standards.

But the social media explosion - from email and Facebook to blogs and Twitter – is making a hash of once-resolved issues and creating all kinds of new dilemmas.

--Businesses have less and less control over how they communicate with the public, while 24-7 bloggers feel free to snipe away.

--Job seekers find their private lives may no longer be private and employees worry that the boss is electronically looking over their shoulders.

--Consumers can't be sure their account information remains safe and have no way to tell whether favorable on-line comments about products and businesses are legitimate.

--Professionals of all sorts -- psychiatrists, attorneys, school teachers, reporters, and even NFL players – are learning to live with new, often controversial, social media rules. A customer's irate blog can undo months and years of corporate image work. A careless email can sabotage delicate contract talks or M&A negotiations. Failure to protect customer information can result in years of costly litigation. An old party-hearty photo may block a chance at a new job. Hitting “send” without thinking can torpedo an executive’s career.

In just one recent week:

--an email circulating among male employees at the PricewaterhouseCoopers Dublin offices – rating the ‘top 10’ new female recruits, with headshots – quickly went “viral” and drew widespread criticism. (Some tut-tutting newspapers, however, also saw fit to run the headshots as news.)

--an executive at Pacific Gas & Electric in California was put on paid leave after seeking to join, under an assumed name, an online discussion group critical of the utility’s plans to install “smart meters.”

--labor lawyers across the country warned clients that a  National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) office planned an unfair labor practice complaint against an ambulance company for firing an employee who posted negative Facebook comments about her supervisor.

--Britain’s financial regulator, seeking to address insider trading, ordered financial services firm to keep records of employee cellphone calls.

No wonder companies are rushing to build new defenses and adopt new policies to reinforce ethical behaviors and learning how to use social media to react to real-time problems. At the same time, individuals are rethinking their casual attitude about exposing personal information on the Web. And in Washington, government agencies are adopting new guidelines defining acceptable social media behavior.

Defining social media behavior is clearly a work in progress

A year ago, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association looked at what organizations are doing about social media issues. Twenty-four percent of those surveyed said an employee had been disciplined in their organization for activities on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, more often in the not-for-profit sector. But half of the respondents said their organization had no policy regarding employee online activity outside of work.

Technology search firm Robert Half in April asked chief information officers about social networking policies; 38% said their companies have tightened social networking policies, while 17% say the policies have eased. And 55% reported “no change”.

A recent survey by Deloitte of about 1,700 companies found that 26% said they had no social media policy which 34% answered “not applicable/don’t know” even though 84% thought every company should have a social media policy in place.

Your Social Media Profile Can Affect Your Job Prospects

A survey commissioned by Microsoft in December 2009 found that 79% of hiring managers and job recruiters reviewed online information about job applicants, and 70% of U.S. hiring managers surveyed said they’d rejected candidates based on what they found online. “Chances are you already have a reputation online, even if you don’t want one,” Microsoft says.  And three-fourths of the U.S. recruiters and HR professionals said their companies have formal policies requiring hiring personnel to research applicants online.

The survey firm declared that “Now, recruiters can easily and anonymously collect information that they would not be permitted to ask in an interview, and the survey found that recruiters are doing just that.”

Corporate and union attorneys went on alert early in November 2010 when word spread of the NLRB’s unfair labor practices complaint involving the Facebook posting. The NLRB said the company’s social media policies were “overly broad.”  The LegalTimes blog quoted the company as saying “although the NLRB’s press release made it sound as if the employee was discharged solely due to negative comments posted on Facebook, the termination decision was actually based on multiple, serious issues.”

Although an administrative law judge will have to rule in the case, Philadelphia-based law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP declared that “all private sector employers should take note of this issue, regardless of whether their workforce is represented by a union.”

You Need a Social Media Policy

Social media behavior “can have real legal and economic consequences for businesses,” writes attorney Michelle Sherman in a Social Media Law Update Blog for law firm Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP.

“A post may seem as innocent as an employee expressing a personal opinion.  However, if the person describes herself as working for a particular company, and then speaks on a highly controversial subject, her post could damage the ‘good will’ of the company. Or, the poster may be recommending a product to all of her Facebook friends without sharing that she happens to work for the product manufacturer in violation of fair advertising practices.”

Sherman says adopting a social media policy can show compliance with Federal Trade Commission guidelines about endorsements, and can better protect brand value “by ensuring that employees do not post unflattering material in association with the business.”

One of the most remarkable studies is the 130-plus-page Social Media White Paper, now in its second edition, prepared by Reed Smith LLP.  The paper review 13 areas where social media is impacting business – from advertising and marketing to trademarks – and declares “the key lesson is that rather trying to control, companies must adopt an altered set of rules of engagement.” Well worth a visit.

It has become increasingly common for major companies to issue specific directives on social media behavior.  While most encourage employee efforts to put companies in a positive light, they also spell out acceptable conduct. For example:

(Wells Fargo): “By posting content on this Blog, you expressly grant Wells Fargo (and its affiliates) the right to use or distribute the posted content in any form, worldwide, and in perpetuity.”

(Kaiser Permanente): “Be mindful of the world’s longer memory – Everything you say is likely to be indexed and stored forever, either via search engines or through bloggers that reference your posts.”

(FedEx): By posting to the FexEx Citizenship Blog “you agree not to post or transmit anything unlawful, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene, inflammatory or pornographic, or anything that infringes upon the copyright, trademark, publicity rights or other rights of a third party.”

(Mayo Clinic): “Where your connection to Mayo Clinic is apparent, make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of Mayo Clinic. In those circumstances, you may want to include this disclaimer: ‘The views expressed on this [blog; website] are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer.”

(Microsoft): “As a general rule, Microsoft does not review, edit, censor, or, obviously, endorse individual posts. You should ‘be smart’ and, as an employee of the company, you should not only think about how your blog reflects on you as an individual, but also about how your blog affects Microsoft as a whole.”

Concerns go well beyond defining proper behavior and move into legal areas. FINRA, the successor to the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc., stresses that social media postings can violate industry rules about promoting investments and soliciting customers. FINRA says securities firms should take steps to be sure that employees using social media sites for business are “appropriately supervised” and “do not present undue risks to investors.”

The Social Media Business Council, a group of large companies that explore social media issues, posts a free “Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit” online suggesting checklists to help companies and employees “learn the appropriate and transparent ways to interact with blogs, bloggers, and the people who interact with them.”

It makes recommendations on how to deal with bloggers, on how employees should handle personal and unofficial blogging, on how to be transparent in providing rewards or incentives to bloggers, on best practices for third parties acting on behalf of a company, and on best practices for “artistic/entertainment situations where temporarily obscuring the sponsor of a site is necessary and appropriate.” For instance, it is okay to use a pretend blog where someone writes that they may have discovered aliens in their house to promote a science fiction movie. But it is not okay to create “a fake customer blog where the ‘author’ writes: ‘I’d love to go see this movie.’ “

This is the first of a two-part series.   The second part is available here.

James Hyatt, a retired reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal, has been writing about business ethics and social responsibility issues since 2005.