An important legal battle has been taking shape in Virginia. It pits the website Facebook against the Virginia Workers Compensation Commission.
The issue involves a flight attendant, employed by Colgan Air, who filed a workers' comp claim. Her employer's investigators then tried to get private user information from her Facebook account.
[We reported two weeks ago on the latest efforts by investigators around the country to take advantage of the wealth of personal information that people put on these social networking sites, including unintended confessions of doing things they shouldn't be doing while supposedly being disabled (to read that article, CLICK HERE).]
In this latest incident, Colgan Air issued a subpena for user information from Facebook and the Virginia Workers' Compensation Commission, in response to Facebook's refusal to comply, ordered that a $200-a-day fine be imposed on the site for as long as its non-compliance continued.
Facebook had argued that federal law prohibits divulging such information, even when subpenaed, and had threatened to go to federal court to seek an injunction.
Well, last week the Virginia Comp Board blinked.
Apparently, not yet ready for such a battle, it withdrew its threat to continue levying the daily fine.
P.S. As it turned out, the subpena wasn't necessary. As you'll read in the article linked below, the injured worker signed a release for the information requested!
Neverthelss, given the stakes involved, the zeal of most fraud investigators, and the popularity of these social networking sites, it's a pretty sure thing that we haven't seen the end of this issue!
To read the copyrighted article from the above listed source,
→
CLICK HERE.
