Picture this

03-12-2008

by Ralph Averbuch

In this age of digital everything everywhere it begs the question where and how much personal responsibility should we take for our actions? Let's take a very recent example. A man was in his local McDonald's burger joint in the USA, when he forgot to take his mobile with him as he left the establishment. The staff found the phone and the owner returned to collect it. The only problem was a member of staff also found some highly personal pictures of the man's wife in flagrante and decided to upload them onto the internet before the phone was returned. Now, following this incident the man is suing McDonald's for USD3 million. But this begs the question, can a company be held responsible for one individual's actions? And let's not overlook the fact that the phone's owner firstly left it, secondly didn't password protect it and thirdly chose to leave very revealing pictures of his wife on the device. Surely there's some personal culpability there? Obviously no-one can condone the actions of the staff member who chose to upload the private pictures to the web, but some responsibility must also lie with the owner of the phone. With all the recent furore over branches of government losing our personal details on an all too frequent basis, can we as individuals absolve ourselves of all responsibility when, despite better judgement, we choose to do something which later causes embarrassment? Perhaps in this case the wife should sue the husband for being naive and McDonald's should add a sticker to their drinks, next to the one about coffee and tea being hot, warning patrons not to leave compromising digital pictures lying around their establishment.