Click at your peril. In the past few weeks, more companies have been snooping through the online universe in an effort to bring their workers in line. Virgin Atlantic airline fired 13 employees for what they said on Facebook. The charge: The employees "brought the company into disrepute." The evidence: a discussion that said its airplanes (their workplace) harbored cockroaches and that its customers were "chavs," the British slang equivalent of "white trash."

As the economy sours, companies have an incentive to expunge workers from their payrolls, and evidence of insubordination makes for some solid ammunition for a quick firing. Which is probably why more axe men are poring through the social networking sites. British Airways workers at London's Gatwick airport are also under investigation for spouting off on Facebook. The transgressions there happened in a closed group where posts complained about "smelly" passengers, American accents, and people who briefly hold boarding passes with their teeth while going through departure checkpoints.

Naturally, companies don't want to look bad. And it's also lousy judgment for opinionated employees to bite the hand that feeds them by complaining about their bosses in a place where they can easily be caught and identified. Let Miss Manners address morality, though. I'm more skeptical about whether employers have the right to dump you merely for having a negative opinion of where you work. I'm also wary of any boss who chases down the details of a worker's personal life.

Beijing took some heat in the press for sweeping its streets of the homeless before the Olympic circus came to town, but China's government isn't the only one trying to banish the disadvantaged from places where visitors tread.

According to the main Atlanta newspaper, the Journal-Constitution, cops have been trawling the streets this month dressed as tourists, hoping to catch panhandlers in the act of rustling up money. As of last week, 44 beggars have been arrested.

One of the police commanders in town explains that the frequency and intimidating style of local begging has gotten so bad that it's annoying tourists and scaring them away. And because most tourists who feel accosted by beggars don't return to town to testify, the city had to resort to using officers posing as tourists so that there would be someone around to tell it to the judge. The decoys are even rigged with hidden cameras.

Atlanta, which passed an ordinance three years ago that banned verbal panhandling in a restricted downtown area near the Georgia Aquarium, is far from the only city to place limits on begging. In the Peachtree City, beggars can usually get by silently holding a sign that asks for cash. But ask "aggressively" -- the interpretation, like the one for obscenity, is fluid -- and it's a crime.