Question: Should I be afraid of negative publicity being generated (either intentionally or otherwise) by corporate employees with a mania for e-mail and blogging?
ANSWER: Indeed you should, and you are not alone in those concerns. According to a new Forrester Consulting survey of 294 companies, conducted on behalf of the
messaging security firm Proofpoint, Inc., corporate America is increasingly keeping an eye on employee communications.
The survey determined that 38% of the surveyed companies with 1,000 or more employees hired staff to read or analyze outbound e-mail, while 44% of companies with more than
20,000 workers employ staff for this very same purpose. And if Big Brother is watching, he's finding some rather scary stuff: 31% of the companies in the survey investigated an
e-mail leak of confidential or proprietary information and 36.4% investigated a violation of privacy or data protection regulations in the past year.
From a PR standpoint, this uncontrolled information flow can be damaging. More than a third of companies reported compromised business due to the exposure of sensitive or
embarrassing information from this kind of activity. This includes theft of customer information (21.1%) and theft of intellectual property (15%).
And that's just from e-mail. The bloggers have been particularly naughty as well: 17.3% of those polled reporting disciplining an employee for violating blog or message board
policies during the past year, while 7.1% of companies actually fired employees for such unauthorized messaging. The publicly traded companies also have reason for concern: 10%
of public companies had to launch inquiries into the unauthorized exposure of financial information via a blog or message board posting in the past year.
Question: With all of the news coverage regarding questionable lobbying in Washington, how much money has actually been passed around on Capitol Hill?
ANSWER: In the past six years, the money tree has seen its roots grow deeper on Capitol Hill. A new report from Public Citizen estimates lobbyists and political
action committees (PAC) contributed at least $103.1 million to members of Congress since 1998. This figure is based on the matching of Federal Election Commission campaign
contribution data with registered lobbyists.
The politicians receiving the highest level of lobbyist money were the two current Pennsylvania Senators, Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, and former South Dakota Senator Tom
Daschle - each received $1 million. The state delegation receiving the highest level of lobbyist money is the three-person team from Alaska. Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the
Senate Appropriations Committee, received $663,000 in contributions to his re-election campaigns and his PAC, while Rep. Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee,
netted $652,448 during this period. The third Alaskan delegate, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, only received $275,000 - but then again, she only came to Washington in 2002.