Wired GC

law from the inside out

Bloomberg: Through the Looking Glass

When reporters become the story, you have something worth reading about.

Late last week, multiple media sources revealed that Bloomberg news reporters had accessed information about customer usage of the Bloomberg financial terminal. The New York Times covers it this morning here; earlier reporting is summarized by Buzzfeed here.

One of the first Bloomberg customers to complain was Goldman Sachs; one assumes that this would get some attention from management at Bloomberg given their corporate use of the terminal.

Apparently a Bloomberg reporter contacted Goldman about the employment status of an employee, because the reporter noted that this employee hadn’t logged on to their terminal for some time.

Last Friday, Bloomberg CEO Daniel Doctoroff posted a first draft of an apology on the corporate blog:

A Bloomberg client recently raised a concern that Bloomberg News reporters had access to limited customer relationship management data through their use of the Bloomberg Terminal. Although we have long made limited customer relationship data available to our journalists, we realize this was a mistake.

Mistake? At least one important customer apparently saw it as something more.

Then early this morning, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, Matthew Winkler, published a slightly longer explanation, which included this:

The recent complaints go to practices that are almost as old as Bloomberg News. Since the 1990s, some reporters have used the terminal to obtain, as the Washington Post reported, “mundane” facts such as log-on information. There was good reason for this, as our reporters used to go to clients in the early days of the company and ask them what topics they wanted to see covered.

Mundane? What was possibly mundane in the 1990s is apparently different now.

Bloomberg News is really an awesome operation. Their iPhone app, with its integrated video and audio content, is way beyond what others offer right now in terms of global coverage and quality.

In-house counsel can watch this story to see what Bloomberg’s crisis management playbook says, and watch in play out in real time.

There may be more twists and turns to this story. One question some law firms and corporate legal departments may have is this: Did reporter access to selected customer use information extend to the Bloomberg Law product?

We are in the early stages of the digital era as far as privacy and appropriate data use are concerned. This is a really hard issue for lawyers since it has a technological nexus and is difficult to research and understand, let alone monitor in real time.

A common tactic in compliance training is to suggest front-line personnel imagine “reading about the company doing X on the front page of the New York Times” before doing it.

I guess that is no longer a hypothetical scenario for Bloomberg.

Here's looking at you, kid...

(Updated 2:05 pm EDT on 13 May 2013).

People Drive the Process

You can’t turn on the news without seeing a large Japan-based auto company being pilloried by Congress. (This is the same company that was lionized by certain senators last year). Once a company’s executives are called to Congress, and made to stand with their right hands raised, the court of public opinion already has rendered a verdict.

What is different is that this company has a product development process named after it. Two of the bedrock principles behind this system are “Respect for People” and “Teamwork.”

These are more than bromides, since process is nothing but words on paper; until somebody does something, nothing happens.

In law school you learn how to assemble the facts, marshal applicable law and advocate an outcome. But you likely didn’t learn how to be part of senior-level corporate decision-making so you have a chance at influencing people and shaping outcomes.

Part of the job description for an in-house counsel is to pull back from the demands of all sorts of processes on a good day and spend even 10 minutes considering how the bigger picture is trending for your client. This task is about 100 times harder when you are facing a major crisis or regulatory challenge.

And it is paradoxically even more difficult when you are the GC of a very successful company, because some of your colleagues may believe that all those great processes will themselves ensure good outcomes.

peopleb4process.jpg

Pandemic Legal Planning

The concerns about a possible swine flu epidemic are building; the U.S. government’s main website is here; the CDC’s is here (they are going avian a bit by Twittering here).

Going back in my archives, I found this Department of Treasury pandemic scenario planning site here. There is some excellent information there, summarized in an overview document.

Also, here’s other resources from the DOJ and the ACLU.

If this influenza spreads, in-house lawyers will be spending a lot of time with security, operations and HR personnel (hopefully not medical). No one has been through one of these; you will have workers who can’t come to work, and many others who won’t want to. Imagine what happens when someone enters a full conference room sniffling and then launches a major sneeze.

Working remotely will be an attractive option for many; it’s probably also worth investigating some flexibility on personal time off. You don’t want sick people coming to work because they’re low on or out of PTO. That’s why sick days used to accrue rather than being changed to the more flexible (but less protective) PTO.

Let’s hope this outbreak will be small and contained quickly. International air travel spreads a virus faster than anything.

Taking the big picture approach, here’s a Google Maps bird’s-eye view of where things stand, allegedly updated in real time (click on this little map, and move your cursor on the full-sized one that opens up in your browser):

swine-map1.jpg

A VC Take on the Economy

Some of the smartest guys in the room at Sequoia Capital have briefed their portfolio companies on how they see the economy, and what to do about it.

A copy of the PowerPoint has been posted to the Internet. You can view it below, and it works quite well on full-view when you click on the movie screen icon on the bottom right.

Sequoia Capital on startups and the economic downturn

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: depression recession)

Slides 47 and 53 have a good summary of the VC Rx.

Certainly the first and third slides aren’t something you usually see in a mainstream corporate briefing.

Back to the Flu, Sure

As I was getting my flu shot last week, I realized that it’s been awhile since I deposited any bird pandemic droppings here.

Then I saw this report earlier today about a potential human infection in China. You can bet that pandemic media coverage will spool up over the next few months, even without a major outbreak.

And that leads to CEOs and board members asking “What are we doing about X?” sort of questions.

So here’s a few resources:

— NPR did an interesting interview on the subject a few months ago; they covered a Treasury Department scenario planning exercise.

— That Treasury-sponsored event has an “Untitled” web page here. There is a treasure trove of information, which is to be expected since the financial services industry is ahead of just about everyone else on crisis planning. (Note: some of the material says “not for public distribution,” so it may not be live indefinitely).

— The federal government has a general website here.

— A CDC-sponsored website is helpful as well.

Any discussion of pandemics (bird flu, SARS, or otherwise) is really about crisis planning. On steroids, if you will.

A closer look might be wise for many companies.

Duck and cover...