Under the guise of corporate compliance, federal prosecutors are making a clear grab for control over how Americans communicate at work, says compliance and ethics author and speaker Joe Murphy.
The government has apparently decided it can use compliance programs as a lever to get us to control how we communicate. This goes under the tech-sounding words “ephemeral and off-channel communications.” But is this just a simple compliance policy implementation question? No. The DOJ is overreaching and misusing its authority in leveraging compliance programs to tell us how we should and should not communicate by adding ephemeral messaging to its “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs” guidance.
Here are 10 reasons why this is problematic:
- In the US, the financial services industry has rules about recording and keeping records of communications. There is no law in the US that requires all other companies and organizations to do this.
- The government is using compliance programs as a lever to extend these narrowly targeted rules to everyone else. There is no legislation supporting this. There has been no consideration of the First Amendment threat from the government attempting to regulate how we communicate.
- There are already laws that cover the government’s concerns: We cannot obstruct…
