E-mail And Phone Snooping In The UK

bscanl writes: "According to this Irish Times story, British companies are to be allowed intercept their employees' e-mail and telephone calls. Nasty stuff."

Comments

Already quite legal.

[_LORAX_]

In the US or most anywhere, it is perfectly legal to snoop on your employees. They are using company propery, and on company time, why not. The biggest problem that I see with the current system, is that is does not go nearly far enough to warn employees exactly what and when they will be monitored.

I would like to see companies bound by a policy that they have to state, and have employees sign every 6 months. This policy would describe what channels are monitored, when, and who to appeal to. Snooping should also only cover outbound calls, or inbound only under suspision, as employees have less control over who calls them.

Personally I don't believe monitoring in most situations is good buisness practice, as it shows that your managers can't do there job of keeping tabs on productive / non-productive employees without employing technology seems a little strange to me, but anyways.

Re:Already quite legal.

[radja]

in europe there is such a thing as 'reasonable expectation of privacy', and all breaches of privacy (like snooping email) have to be known in advance. Just because the infrastructure belongs to the company doesn't give them full rights to snoop everything. And it shouldn't.. or do you think companies should also be allowed to hang cameras in their toilets? After all.. it's their property... it is reasonable to expect that you won't be taped in a compromising position on the toilet.

//rdj

//rdj