In an interesting turn of events – especially considering all of the antitrust hot water in which Microsoft has found itself in the past with the Federal government – Google is suing the Federal government for requiring that any vendor proposals in response to a Request for Quotation (RFQ – similar to an RFP, or Request for Proposal) by the Feds to create a new, unified online messaging system, must include the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite.

If you think that because your Facebook or Twitter profile is set to “private” that it means that you can control who will see what you post, think again. In fact, even if you delete what you have posted – in your private account – you can still be forced to let others see it, even after you’ve deleted it. That’s the Court ruling in a recent case involving plaintiff Kathleen Romano, who may have deleted postings, made to her private Facebook and MySpace accounts, which would be beneficial to the defendant, the Steelcase chair company.

When you’re going through the security gates at an airport, you’re most likely resigned to the fact that your bag will be searched, regardless of whether there is a reason to do so.   But what about your computer, laptop, or cell phone, with the overwhelming amount of personal information it contains – do you expect that to be searched?  You should, as Lisa Wayne found out the hard way when her laptop was whisked away and subjected to a half-hour search.  It turns out this is fairly routine.  Now a law suit has been filed by Wayne and others to out a halt to this practice (some would say ‘abuse’) by the TSA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

An Arkadelphia, Arkansas teen is suing his mother for accessing his Facebook account, posting what he claims are slanderous comments, and then changing his Facebook password, effectively locking him out of his own account.  In her defense, Denise New claims that as a mother she has the right to monitor what her son is doing.

A Federal court has dismissed the prostitution lawsuit brought against Craigslist by Chicago’s Cook County Sheriff’s Department and Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart. Sheriff Dart had argued that because the Craigslist erotic services section helps to arrange meetings between hookers and johns, and steers people to places where they can pay for erotic services, Craigslist is in violation of laws against prostitution, and that it should be shut down. Dart added that “the sheer number of daily postings has made it impossible to stymie Craigslist generated prostitution.”

The High Court in the UK took the unusual step last week of allowing service of a court order on Twitter and, perhaps even more unusually, it worked! The order required that an anonymous defendant cease posing on Twitter as Donal Blaney, the blogger behind Blaney’s Blarney, and abandon the imposter account. The imposter account, using the monicker “Blaneysblarney”, looked identical to the Twitter account under which Donal Blaney actually posts, at “Donal_Blaney”.

Recently an employee of Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming followed up on a request by a customer to email loan documents to a Gmail address. Unfortunately, after doing so, the employee realized that they had emailed the documents to the wrong Gmail address. Oops. Not only that, but they had accidentally included a file containing the identities, addresses, loan information, and tax identification information of more than 1300 Rocky Mountain Bank customers – 1325 to be exact. OOPS. All to a Gmail address belong to nobody-knows-who (presumably the error occurred when the Rocky Mountain Bank employee typoed the Gmail address).

Linden Labs, creator of the popular virtual reality portal SecondLife, has been sued in first life (in other words, real life) for “allowing” Second Life players to counterfeit the SexGen brand of virtual sex toys sold in Second Life by Storker Serpentine (a/k/a in real life as Kevin Alderman). Alderman is joined in his suit by Second Lifer Munchflower Zaius (known in real life as Shannon Grei), who sells virtual clothing in Second Life. Apparently nowhere has it been suggested that any of these players Getta Life.

A group of Facebook users has sued Facebook for violation of their privacy, and privacy law in general. The group, which includes two children under the age of thirteen, an actress, and a professional photographer, have sued Facebook in California Superior Court, alleging that Facebook’s practices violate California online privacy laws which make it illegal to reveal users’ private data for commercial gain.

AT&T has amended the language of its Terms of Service (TOS) to prohibit AT&T’s customers from participating in any class action lawsuits or class arbitrations against AT&T.

In a scene that seems straight out of, well, 1984, Amazon reached out across its WhisperNet network and removed all copies of Animal Farm and 1984 itself from every Kindle and Kindle 2 which had purchased and downloaded the books from Amazon. So high school student Justin Gawronski has sued them, claiming in his lawsuit that the loss of his copy of 1984 has cost him far more than the cost of the book, and includes the loss of all of the notes he’d taken and attached to the book on his Kindle, and the value of the effort in creating them.

From our “Now I’ve heard it all” department, Gregory McKenna (misreported in many articles as “George McKenna”) is suing, among others, the St. Louis County Police Department, the FBI, and Apple Computers for allegedly allowing the Mafia to bug his iPods (along with his house, his cars, and more) and allowing them to play sinister songs with hidden messages to him on his iPods.

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook, alleging that Facebook is charging advertisers for more clicks than their ads actually receive, and also that Facebook is not doing enough to curtail click fraud which is resulting, the lawsuit says, from competitors clicking on an advertiser’s Facebook advertisment in order to use up their allotted clicks and run up the advertiser’s Facebook advertising bill.

Employment attorneys are warning of a new trend: the use of positive recommendations on Linked-In as evidence in lawsuits against the recommender. Here’s how it works: an employer gives a positive recommendation on Linked In for an employee. The employee is later let go. The positive recommendation on LinkedIn now becomes ammunition and evidence in a lawsuit against the employer for discrimination, harrassment, or other improper firing practices.

A website in Holland – Miljoenhuizen.nl – has been held liable for the summary that Google search turned up for its site. Yes, you read that right – they were held responsible for the fact that Google excerpted and concatenated text from their webpage in a way that suggested that the plaintiff, the BMW dealership Zwartepoorte, had gone bankrupt.