Slashdot Mirror
Workplace Privacy Lacking
PaGeN writes: "It's about time. Per today's New York Times, thinking and respected jurists are raising eyebrows at the legal principle that seems to have sprung up overnight: "You have no right of privacy in on-the-job online communications." Judge James M. Rosenbaum, Reagan-appointed chief judge of the United
States District Court for the District of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, expresses surprise that employees should be expected to tolerate "an electronic rummage through their lives." "The present concept permits -- and even encourages - 'Big Brother' searches," wrote Judge Rosenbaum. "... just as an employee does not surrender all privacy rights on the company's premises, so they should not be automatically surrendered on the company's computers."" The column linked above is interesting; you can also read the original paper online.
The best part was when they said I'd spent X hours a day on the internet. I asked how they knew that, since an http request took seconds to fill, not hours, but they again refused to answer. Apparantly if I read one news story at 9:00 and another at 9:45, they figured I spent the first 45 minutes reading the first story, and then assumed I must have spent another 45 minutes reading the other story for a total of an hour and a half. Stupid shits did not once dispute my claim (backed up half-heartedly by my boss) that I was doing good work and meeting my performance goals. One of my last acts before the door hit me in the ass on my way out was to claim my 3 still-unclaimed (because I'd had so many others I'd pretty much got one each already) peer-recognition awards.
God I'm glad to get out of there! I'd name them, but they'd probably track me down and get me fired from this job, too.
They only give you phones for work too, but it's still OK to call your wife and talk for a minute. If I do that via email instead, I don't want the email read by anyone else. People are right to demand privacy in this area.
Remember folks, it's ILLEGAL TO RECORD COPS WHEN THEY PULL YOU OVER... at least in Massachusetts. See this story for more details. Only YOU have no privacy when you're on the job.
So it's a good thing that people don't go around calling their attorneys over the telephone without using scramblers, huh?
You can have an expectation of privacy without being actually private. This is where the word 'expectation' comes into play. It may be magnified through obfuscation, but whispering in a crowded courtroom works great all by itself.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"It's not your piece of paper It's not your pen Neither of them belong to you so how can you possibly expect any ideas that you write down to belong to you?"
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
because we have money to eat
No wonder people from the U.S. have nutrition problems, if they keep eating money and all.
--Moo
that lasted what 30 minutes on slashdot, before a story requiring the PDF format was posted for all to access. Nice to see Slashdot standing tall and support Dmitry.
/Hypocrite.
Between that and the doubleclick ads slashdot keeps running right above the stories about how heinous their privacy violations are....
We need to change the name of this place to
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
the company wants their cake, your cake, and they want to eat it all, and they want you to stand by and prepare to clean up after them if they make a mess. My company is a LARGE IT/Financial firm and they do have a limited tolerance policy, ie NO PORN or un-PC stuff, they monitor but do not interfere unless your usage becomes a problem. Now exactly what a problem is no one will define so live life on the edge, and SURF from HOME.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
so why post as an AC then ? You are proof that evolution is not infallible.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Actually, there is a way that is both better for privacy and for safety. Require a brief test of coordination and attentiveness before the driver can get behind the wheel. If they fail, they get sent home, no questions asked. A driver is allowed a small number of failures over a given number of days/weeks/months before his/her "employability" is reviewed.
Such tests have been developed, and they do work -- except that they also detect drivers who are too tired, or sick, or emotionally upset, or whatever, and that ends up losing money (on sick time, substitutes, etc.) for the company. So it's generally not done.
I support the right of my employer to rummage through my mail. They own the hardware, software, infrastructure, etc. as was noted by others above. There is one other consideration however. If you are unhappy with the frequency in which your employer exercises this right, quit. I currently work for a company where although we have the right to do this, we choose not to exercise it except in extreme circumstances. Frankly, if your company's PHBs are doing this, they're certainly abusing you in other ways as well, and it's time to find some better PHBs. They do exist-I work for some of them. But you have to be skilled to be hired by them, and you have to be persistent to find them-they don't hire as often because there is little turnover. It may not be easy, but I assure you the rewards are worth the effort.
Regards,
ehintz
I totally agree, people now want anything they want while at work, personal email, phone calls, napster (napster? what's that? :P), IM, pr0n. And they want all this in total privacy.
Back in 94 or so, I was involved in a discussion about the loosening the fairly restrictive e-mail policy and the granting of full Internet access to all users.
The conclusion was "YES! If we do this, employees will spend less time on the phone, going out to lunch, shopping, and doing anything that would cause them to leave their desk. The Internet will allow them to be more productive (meaning, work longer hours), which is great for us!"
Of course, now this is being spun as lost productivity, just as how Windows Solitaire was demonized while doodling on paper or staring out the window was conveniently ignored. Sometimes it pays to remember why the company put a phone and an internet-connected computer on everyone's desk.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I (as an employeer) am not interested in what my employees do/keep etc with their (company supplied or not) computer/laptop/palm/other. I may, however, have to monitor the network to ensure that there isn't a sniffer, trojan, virus, etc. on the network. I may see/discover/read something that is 'private'. So what to do?
I support those who said that encryption is the answer (It's also a great flag that says 'I don't wany everybody to read this', and pretty much the only reasonably safe one. It could be ROT-13 for all *I* care, but I would rather users used PGP or GPG!
Um, that's exactly how it works. If you write down an innovative new idea with pen and paper while at work, then your company probably owns that idea (unless you got a very liberal employment contract past them). Many companies even claim ideas that you have on your own time at home.
Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus",
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
One happy note: my company appears to have abandoned random drug testing because of the urgent desire to cut costs right now. I'm not sure why they were doing it in the first place if it wasn't worth it, but I'm not complaining too hard.
See, the slowing economy does have a silver lining :)
Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus",
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Heck, I knew a guy in school who always coded better when somewhat sloshed; I could see how someone would do better work when high. I'm not too crazy about that person toking up and then immediately driving to work, but I agree with you that what you do on the weekend in your own home is really nobody else's business.
Of course, I don't think it's the government's business either, at least until you start holding up 7-11's to get money for your habit.
Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus",
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's not your T1 (DS3...)
It's not your router
It's not your firewall
It's not your switch
It's not yout hub
It's not your CAT5
It's not your jack
It's not your server(s)
It's not you computer (laptop)
It's not your mouse
It's not your keyboard
It's not your software (maybe it isn't even your companies!)
With my current stock options it is partly mine. I own a portion of the company I work for. I also own stock outside of options.
It mus be pretty sad to have a job that you put in 40 hours work and get 40 hours pay then go home never to think about it again untill next week. I like my job and enjoy it greatly. If your employee/emplyor relation ship is a work/pay only relation ship then you are not a valuable employee and probly should be fired for surfing and not working 100% of the time. I work an easy 60+ hours a week with some surfing and such in between work spirts. Most all surfing i do is browseing documentation and reading slashdot. both i think help me in my quest to better the company for education and social research.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Let's look to telephones for an analogy. Is it legal for your employer to monitor your personal telephone calls made from work?
(I don't know; is it?)
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
That's totally understandable, and actually something I hadn't thought about. There are, however, a large number of other ways in which to send confidential documents to competitors (i.e. on dead trees), and if you're not allowing PGP because you're worried about that, you've got the wrong employees. :)
That makes a lot of sense then, I would have to agree with the rule in such a situation.
Your comment (and your company policies) are exactly what the article and paper are discussing.
"The present concept permits -- and even encourages - 'Big Brother' searches," wrote Judge Rosenbaum. "... just as an employee does not surrender all privacy rights on the company's premises, so they should not be automatically surrendered on the company's computers."
You don't have the right to search my wallet (or purse, for those so inclined) when I come to work or go home through the door, so why can you search my personal email just because it goes through the server?
I don't agree or disagree with any of this. I haven't had enough time to form an opinion yet. That said, these are the questions that are the issue in this case.
The worst thing I have heard in regards to this is an employer who fired an employee for using PGP on their company system. It was against the rules, so I understand the firing, but the rule is wrong. I should have the right to send encrypted mail from work if I feel like it. I wouldn't get in trouble if I wrote an encrypted letter using a one-time pad or something. I use PGP for my email at my job all the time (to mail the SO).
I got an Ask Slashdot posted about a year ago. I asked how to protect my company while still allowing some freedom and privacy for employees.
Slashdot didn't get it then, and they don't get it now.
Probably because of the duality of Slashdot members. On one hand, a bunch of neo-hippies, high-school/college students, and disgruntled cubicle drones who want everything and fuck the company. On the other hand are fearful middle managers who immediately scream "call the lawyers".
This is nothing new. Move along, move along.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
You appear to be avoiding half the issue.
;)
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
When you're at work, you're still you, you're just on work's premises using their gear. You have to respect *both* halves of `still you' and `their gear', though. This is why it's give and take: the only sensible kind of policy I've seen is one that says `we won't snoop and you won't waste resources'.
There's no need to get all stuck on one extreme ("it's the employer's gear!") or another ("you have privacy rights!") when there's a common-sense fair middle of the road to be taking.
Next issue please?
~Tim
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~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
So i guess you own every piece of equipment between your desktop and slashdots server. Wow.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
It's not really that arbitrary if you take into account the primary purpose of both the phone and the restroom. The primary purpose of my work phone is to make work calls. Of course, I use it for personal reasons (especially since my group likes e-mail WAY too much for its own good), but I know that if I'm talking with my doctor and a call comes in about the order system going to hell, the doctor gets put on hold. The restroom, on the other hand, has a pretty specific primary purpose that has little to do with accomplishing work.
Yep. Technically we're not allowed to make or receive personal phonecalls either...
Working at the University of Georgia, everything that isn't security or trade secret related on my computer is public record. Anyone submitting the proper request can get anything I store on my machine.
Whatever happened to this bill which would force employers to inform the employees of their e-mail reading policies?
I firmly believe that. At my last job, my manager actually handed out PGP warez to the "inner circle" and we could right-click-to-encrypt our files and email. I also reloaded my workstation over a weekend early on to make sure there was nothing funky running in the "power user" load.
As for personal email, I found an old 486 laying around in the server room, and loaded linux on it. He ran some script-kiddie stuff against it for his personal satisfaction, and I had it locked down really well. He would call me and ask, "is dead yet? now? how about now? now?"
My personal email host is only for friends-of-friends, and they have ssh listening on 443, so I could ssh out to it, even when port 22 ssh outbound was blocked. I would occasionally surf on that host with lynx, and would rarely xfer files up to my account using scp. My boss hated the machine with a passion, but I was literally one of the three people who built that place, and he would never get rid of me.
Come to think of it, I could have just used an SSH port forward to setup my own offsite Squid proxy server. Of course I think of that now, now that I've been gone a year!!!
--
Steve Jackson
Intelligent Life on Earth
...to distinguish privacy related issues when talking about a corporate network. After all, the only real reason a company will give you Internet access in your office these days is because more and more business applications require it. Therefore companies expect a certain level of usage discipline from their employees.
/. , so i'll be going now...
Of course, I dont know if my boss would appreciate me using my work time to post to
So remember: Excel Spreadsheets are okay. All Your Base/Porn is not.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Sigh ... I guess it's back to those paper-and-staples porn publications when I'm waiting for a client to call!
"Old man yells at systemd"
two words to respond to your so called privacy "easy answer": keystroke monitoring.
Your employer could just run something like Boss Everywhere, which does keylogging and activity tracking. Other spyware could be doing screenshots while you secretly fire up PGP. With the price of storage being next to nothing, there's no real reason to expect that there isn't a big database full of everything you've done in case they need to fire your or whatever.
There are lots of good reasons to use encryption, but for this reason, especially at work, isn't one of them. You might have the world's greatest pass-phrase but if you're keeping your secret key on the drive and being keylogged you're easily compromised.
"In his article, "In Defense of the Hard Drive," Judge Rosenbaum cited an example of what he thought to be an overly broad search -- a 1999 probe by The New York Times Company of employee computer records at its office in Norfolk, Virginia"
You could work for the government/military. At least they tell you outright you should have absolutely no sense of privacy whatsoever. (One of the few things they're actually truthful about.)
A meta-comment: what has happened to full disclosure? Normally full disclosure is required in all articles to show where the author's bias lies.
In this article it cited a case where one office run by The New York Times Company was searching. The NY Times that the linked article is on is run by The New York Times Company.
They SHOULD have mentioned that. They were talking about themselves (always a great source of bias) and they didn't even bother to mention that.
Nit picking I know, but hey, I was real, fully disclosed news, not fluffy bunnies.
When you're at work, you should be WORKING. If you don't want the company to find out about it, don't do it at work. Simple? Yes?
You would think that this would be common sense.
Oh Yeah, most people lack common sense...
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
It is my headphones and palm-pilot cradle, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe you should change the beginning of the first sentence to read:
Probably because of the duality of Slashdot posters.
Don't judge the whole heard based on what a few percentage say.
rabtech does have a point. Businesses have to protect themselves from rabid lawyers. Businesses also have to give workers privacy. The hard part is going to be finding the middle ground between reasonable use (of computers) and reasonable privacy (of workers).
These kinds of articles aren't even really news, in the sense that corporations will always have the upper-hand in terms of employee "privacy." People need to get used to the idea, and circumvent the problem instead of simply bitch about it.
This is yet another example of why we should require licenses to use computers. Because that way we would not be pestered with idiots like Judge Rosenbaum and silly notions like the "cyber time-out."
This sounds great. And I'd bet that this will dramatically improve Judge Rosenbaum's standing as a with-it, 21st-century judge. No doubt he'll be assigned the next DMCA-related case to surface in his circuit, and he'll be asked to speak on this issue at state bar conventions across the Midwest.
This would be a catastrophe. This lunacy must be stopped before it gains the slightest credibility in any circles, anywhere. (And no, I am not kidding.)
Example #1:
Quick quiz: what's been the big computer story of the week? Right--the SirCam virus. Well, lessee. Suppose you're the network sysadmin for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Minneapolis. You have been infected by the SirCam virus, which is wreaking havoc on your email system (and sending random files from your users desktops all over the Internet). How can you stop it?
"That's a no-brainer," you say. "I just identify the infected machines, isolate them, and remove the virus." Bzzzzt! Wrong! You see--you can't remove that virus from that machine. It's the computer used by a moron circuit court judge who has propounded the theory of the "Cyber Time-Out"--72-hour notice of an intent to search the computer, in which you must specify the exact files you intend to review. (More on that delirious bit of nonsense below.) So for the next 72 hours, after you have identified that the problem is Judge Rosenbaum, after you have identified the specific files that are causing the virus, after you have jumped through the hoops that define "proper notice" (what? he's on vacation? with no phone number?) and after he has had recourse through the courts to prevent that search, you finally get the chance to address the virus.
And what, pray tell, do you do if the yutz decides to get really stupid and insist that he won't let you search the PC, because he doesn't think he has a virus. And what happens if he manages to convince some lawyer and/or a judge to agree with him, and gets an injunction against you?
Example #2:
You are the Vice President and Legal Counsel for a major corporation. Your counterpart at a competitor calls you, and follows up with a document sent by messenger. One of your sales managers has been negotiating for a position at your competitor, and has gratuitously offered extremely confidential information as a show of his enthusiasm for his new employer. (You might think that the competitor would say, "eureka! we have the secret plans!" but it isn't true. The legal consequences of getting caught are horrendous [and can include jail time]. Standard corporate practice is to return competitor secrets as quickly as possible, using publicly-documented methods.)
What do you do? You call the network admins and tell them that you want the bozo's network passwords changed immediately, and you want his machine seized. Who knows what other corporate secrets this guy has handed out?
Bzzzt! Sorry! The bozo in question has a lawyer, and the lawyer has been reading The Green Bag. And the lawyer has read this cockamamie theory about a "cyber time-out" that requires you to a) notify the employee about a search 72 hours in advance; and b) specify the exact files you wish to view. The "Rosenbaum Rule" (coming soon, to a courtroom near you) explicitly frowns on general searches--you can't just go fishing on the fellow's hard drive to see if he's doing something nefarious.
Rosenbaum's Tautology
Beyond the practical problems that I have raised above, Judge Rosenbaum's proposed "cyber time-out" includes a "reasonable" provision that effectively prevents any search of an employee's hard drive at all. Rosenbaum specifies two (really three) tests:
1. The employee must be notified 72 hours in advance;
1a. The employee must be properly notified (and what constitutes proper notice will be litigated for years); and
2. The employer must specify which specific files are to be searched.
That's a tautology: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the names of the specific file you're looking for; and you can't know the specific file you're looking for unless you search the hard drive. Think of the SirCam virus again (or just snooping in the employee's email). Lots of email clients (including Microsoft Outlook, the most commonly-used MUA) permit you to specify the name of the file where mail is stored. If the user changes the file name from the default (say, to "porn_drugs_terrorism.pst") the employer has no way of knowing the file name. And hence cannot properly inform the employee of a search--so the employee cannot be searched.
Is Rosenbaum that dumb?
Ask yourself. Is Judge Rosenbaum really so stupid as to not realize that his oh-so-reasonable "cyber time-out" effectively prevents employers from searching employee hard drives at all? I honestly don't think so. Lawyers get through law school by learning to carefully understand the meaning and implication of every word: and to write contracts (and legal journal articles) that carefully exploit the full meaning of each word. Rosenbaum isn't just a lawyer--he's a judge. He isn't just a judge, he is a federal judge; and he isn't just a federal judge, he is an appellate court judge. He didn't just write this article on the back of an envelope--he wrote it for a legal journal, hoping to promote a new legal theory. His clever little tautology is intentional: you can't search the hard drive unless you know the file name. And you can't know the file name unless you search the drive. (Question: what's the file name on a boot track virus?)
Bottom line:
This is a really, really, really bad idea.
Get a cell phone
Yes, but what about the air in the office you are transmitting through!
Surf from home securely from work!
Get VNC or PCanywhere. There's no way in hell that they can monitor that! (Famous Last Words)
More
In related events, smart people noted that it's possible to encrypt your email channel and your web channel. These smart people mentioned tools such as ssh, and commented that they work.
Rent a porta-potty. Make all personal poos in the porta-potty.
If you don't like it then get your company to change it's policies. By and large most companies don't tap their employees phones because the management would never want their own phones tapped. However, it's easy to spot an employee who is abusing the phone equiment (they are constantly chit-chatting). With computers it's easy to divert them to your own benefit without others easily noticing. For this reason I wouldn't expect companies to change their policies any time soon.
Burris
Anybody care to comment on both the technical and procedural points of, say, doing your web-based 'net banking over SSL from work? Granted, I'm sure they could see where the connection went, and then wouldn't be too concerned with the contents of the communication beyond that - or at least, no more so than non-encrypted traffic.
Or connecting with the outside world (say, your home *nix box) via SSH, assuming you can get through the firewall that way, to access your home files and/or email?
Am I missing something stupid/simple about the points of encrpytion/decryption in SSL/H in thinking that said employer would not be able to monitor the contents of that traffic? Thoughts from the peanut gallery?
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
I understand its there computer, network, etc,etc...
If companies want more hours out of there employee's, then the employee's will need to use the internet to take care of private matters.
In the real world, many thing that need to be taken care of need to be done during the same time as work. If my emlpoyer wants me to handle the medical affairs of my family from the office, then they had better not be snooping on me, especially with out reason to believe I'm doing something wrong.
we're not just talking about porn and games here, we're talking about the way things in ones life need to be taken care of, and the reasonable privacy someone should recieve from there employers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At the company that I work at, each and every person we hire must sign a disclosure saying the company has the right to read everything they email, monitor there network traffic and listen to there phone conversations. If any of these actions are taken upon an individual, it is recorded by HR. Being the network administer where I am employed, I have had to do the search and seizure of network traffic, internet and lan based and retrieval and review of serveral empolyees email. I can't say I like doing this, besides the fact it is a pain in the ass, I always find out things about my fellow co-workers i really don't care to know about. I think the way the judge is looking at giving a 72 hour timeframe with notice to the employee is a good idea, would allow people to clean up there act a bit.
er, I meant "any different from my employer knowing I have a certain illness"
I consider my personal conversations about personal life and personal problems to be just as important as what my body parts look like or the sounds they make.
You say the phone's chief function is to make work calls. Sorry, a phone's chief function is to place any type of call. The employer has placed an arbitrary limit on its function. Its inherent nature is not single function. A person using the phone to make a medical appointment is not using the phone in some radical unexpected manner.
It is reasonable to expect a certain level of personal activity and communication while on the job. E-mail and web use should be no different.
Why do you expect privacy and secrecy, when you are using your employer's computer equipment on company time? ("No, boss, I'm not going to tell you where I am, or what I'm doing, or where I'm sending post, or what's in it. You don't need to know...")
In this type of situation, an employee complains of harassment/discrimination/retaliation and the company then searchs their computer and finds an email to a sick father and then fires the employee for using the computer for personal use. Or, after the person is fired, they seach the computer and then gives that reason for the termination.
The Supreme court that after acquired evidence cannot be used to justify termination, but says nothing on an investigation being a form of retaliation. That an investigation was done because a complaint have been made.
Maybe everyone should use PGP at work?
Fight Spammers!
I think that companies should be able to have any privacy policy like. However, the company should be required by law to state their privacy policy completely and accuratly. If you don't agree with it, go somewhere else.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I don't like the whole idea of "breach-of-privacy" or anything like that, but a company needs to protect itself, and needs to protect its investments. A company pays for internet access, alpha pagers, corporate email systems, and is liable for what passes through them. Much like an ISP is liable for a stupid person who subscribes to them launching a full-scale DoS to a remote site. The ISP is held responsible initially, before an investigation takes place to find the culprit.
I guess the point is that if what you did and what you sent WAS considered private, then the whole antitrust case against MS would never had materialized. There were very strong words used between Mr. Gates and his executives, naming illegal practices in marketing and sales. The strategies that were used by MS to attempt purging Netscape from the market would never have had full-blown evidence if their email was considered private. How else is a corporation supposed to hold itself responsible and liable for what it and its employees do? If they do not assume the responsiblity, then who takes the blame?
It just makes no sense that a person can use a service that they are not paying for (internet, cell phone, pager, etc.), and expect that the person serving them that service and PAYING for that service will not expect to cover their bases and make sure they are not held responsible for illegal conduct or activity. And if this is flamebait, I apologize, but like other people said, if you want to do "questionable" things, like surf for porn or download mp3's, etc., just do it at home. You suck it up and take the responsibility.
Perhaps you're not wasting company resources, but you are using them. They have every right to know exactly how their equipment and resources are being used. You have no right to expect that you can use company property as if it were your own whether you're on a break or not.
--
You can't hear me but I'm clapping right now...
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This
It's not your T1 (DS3...)
It's not your router
It's not your firewall
It's not your switch
It's not yout hub
It's not your CAT5
It's not your jack
It's not your server(s)
It's not you computer (laptop)
It's not your mouse
It's not your keyboard
It's not your software (maybe it isn't even your companies!)
None of it belongs to you
They ARE paying you (even if you don't like what they're paying you)
Most Sys Admins don't give a crap if you send your (insert personal contact here) an email or two about how your day is going.
I have a real simple rule for my users. Don't send anything via email that would make a nun blush.
In the world of electrons, 1s and 0s and RECOVERABLE information you have to be out of your friggin mind to expect privacy of any kind!
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This
I am entitled to a 1 hour lunchbreak and two 15 minute paid breaks (usually termed smoking breaks, but I don't). I often surf on these breaks. My business has bandwidth out the yinyang, and the computer I use will just be sitting there if noone's on it. Therefore, I am not wasting company rescources. That time is my time. So, why should they care that I'm reading erotic stories?
Oh, yes, cell phones are much more secure. No loss of privacy there.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I know of a case where a woman complained about receiving offensive email and the company did nothing about it, but I haven't heard of a case where the employee went straight to the courts.
Could you provide me with a link?
Anonymous posts are filtered.
You're right. It is about expectations.
If my employer gives me a lot of freedom, I
usually put forth an extra effort.
If they babysit me, they get 9-5 minus breaks.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
Did you even read the article?
Sure, the computer belongs to my boss, as does my time when I'm on the clock.
But, I am entitled to breaks and if I choose to spend part of my lunchhour reading Slashdot or even writing a loveletter to my wife, it is none of my employer's business.
Sure, I have to respect the acceptable use policy and thankfully, where I work, it is pretty liberal. But I am also a human being entitled to a little breathing space.
I'm not saying that I should be free to download kiddie porn or do anything else illegal using the tools provided. But, just as I feel free to make an occasional personal call from work (not long distance mind you), I don't feel that every keystroke I type is on the clock, just because the computer is not my own.
Recently, I returned to my former employer a computer loaned to me in the hopes that I would do some work at home, or at least use it to master the tools of my trade. After having had it in my house for over a year, there was no way I could be sure exactly what was on the drive. The only way I could be sure that I didn't leave embarrasing or questionable material on the drive was to return it blank and that is what I did.
I feel a little guilt that the boss might have to pay to reinstall the software, but I am sure that the unremunerated hours of work I did on the machine while it was in my possession more than compensates for that small cost.
The long and short of it is that the computer is not like most tools. It is a medium of communication. If free speech is not to be constrained, some accommodation must be made in recongition that not every communication an employee participates in during the inordinate fraction of their life spent at work is going to be work related.
My .02
We had similar incidents here, one or two inwhich guys were caught with porn, the machine was seized(it was one in a common area but with profiles enabled so we could tell who was doing what) replaced with an Identical machine, and then searched for evidence. We also had a guy get caught dispersing trade secrets via AOLIM, about an as yet unreleased product, he got canned as well.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
personally I have never considered that I would have privacy in the work place I will probably take a Karma hit for saying so, but seriously your there at work to work. If your doing something besides working(goofing off, flirting, looking for your next job, whatever) then expect to get slapped for it. Maybe I just have screwed up work ethic, but if they are paying you the company that you work for should be able to expect you to be doing something that benifits them, not browsing the lastest porn site. If you want to do those other things on a break/lunch then go away from the company to do it.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
In another article today (here) we were discussing how it's no one's business what I exchange with other people. The problem with the work environment is that because you are being compensated for your time, you are expected to dedicate that time to work being done for the company/organization rather than web surfing for non-work related things, chatting with friends, and tweaking your desktop. However, with some sort of file encryption and pipe encryption you could communicate with being snooped on. The only issue there is that someone could block the ports, so common ports like 80 should be used to perform the protocol. Of course, this is a tool and could be used for both good and bad, so likely it would cause a ruckus. VPNs of a more private sort are in the future for file sharing, so those that start it up are going to be the next Internet money makers.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I wasn't trying to be ironic, and I don't know how you interpreted what I said as supporting drug testing-- I am firmly against it for any job.
And no, customer service workers are not white collar-- white collar means management or professional work, which does not include clerks, cashiers, call-center operators, and the like. At least these jobs are no longer what I would consider white collar, nor would I consider them blue collar, they are currently workers-without-collar-color. Maybe that's because their uniforms often don't have collars.
I do not have a signature
It's pointless, that's why. Unless they have an instant drug test each morning before and a breathalyzer that must be passed before the bus will power on, it's pointless. There are a good many legal and illegal drugs that may or may not be detected. Also, unless they've fixed the problem, eating poppy seeds can trigger a false positive on some tests. So if we give you the test when you're hired, what's to say you just haven't been able to afford drugs, you being unemployed and all, but now that you're getting paid you go buy an eighth and start sparking up on the weekend.
:)
Did I mention that in addition to invading the privacy of the persons in question, it's pointless?
I do not have a signature
It's not just surfing, it's sending email to family/friends, and I suppose other things. Even so, the question isn't really whether you are spending time on it (most companies won't fire you for a little personal surfing/email, just like it's often okay to make a personal phone call), it's whether you have any right to privacy while doing it.
Personally I think it's laughable that white collar workers in large corporations would expect privacy (and a host of other comforts) that customer service workers in the same company have no chance of getting-- or that any reasonable adult would tolerate some of the things some corporations try. I mean, some of these companies actually require you to submit your bodily fluids before taking a desk job. Talk about an invasion of privacy!
I do not have a signature
http://www.mutt.org
http://www.gnupg.org
learn them and your communications will be secure
and private and authenticated. Be sure to put
a passphrase on your key(s). Use https whenever
possible.
p.
Anything can be monitored. ANYTHING. I have the ability to remotely view up to 255 users' workstations screens at one time. Without them knowing... I usually don't view anyone unless we suspect something. Just remember, company owned equipment is just that...company owned..you have no rights.
Look, the company paid for that computer that its employees use, the company paid for the internet connection, the company paid for the phone line, and the company paid for the damn power. They aren't paying all this so that their employees can fuck off.
But, on the other hand, employees shouldn't have to fear that every time they, say, go to a website such as this one for a source of "recreational news unrelated to business" that they'll be fired. But, on the same hand, they shouldn't be allowed to parasite off of their company, hogging bandwidth, or to spend too much of their time doing things other than what they're getting paid for.
So, here's what I propose. Companies should be able to use certain blocking software that will block out innappropriate websites from -- porn sites, and so forth. They should also be able to monitor how much time an employee spends on the internet, and how much bandwidth (s)he consumes. If the employee spends more time on the internet than is expected for his/her job, or uses significantly more bandwidth than (s)he would be expected to for his/her job, then here's what should happen:
(1) The company should lock down their computer, so any "evidence" can not be tampered with: in other words, so the original content of files as of the time of lockdown can not be modified[but so as to allow the employee to open the file and save it as another file, leaving the original unchanged].
(2) The company should give the employee a warning of an impeding investigation, where the employee can have time to talk to the officials at the company and his lawyers.
(3) The investigation should proceed. The basis upon which disicplinary actions or the cancellation of his job based on what is found on his hard drive in such a case, should be laid out clearly in his employee contract, and made verbally clear to him by whoever hired him in the first place.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Use safeweb, or a similar secure proxy. Let them snoop all they like, but it will be a cold day in hell before they figure out where you've been surfing ;-)
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Maybe it is just me, but I have a job to get paid. My "communications" are usually not done on the job, and the ones that *are* done on the job are specifically related to my job.
There is substantial evidence that the people who are too often *not* doing job-related work on the job usually are employees that have the lowest performance evaluations anyway.
This leads me to believe that companies are wasting time monitoring what their employees are doing online, as they will often end up showing poor performance in the near future anyway.
However, I ardently *disagree* with anyone who says that companies "should not be allowed to do this". It is completely acceptable for a company to want to ensure that employees are staying on task, not commit crimes online for which the company would be responsible, and aren't disrupting other communications needed for the company network.
If you don't like your boss looking around your shoulder, go elsewhere. And don't give me BS about every company monitoring employees, some of the best paying jobs are offered by companies that *don't* monitor.
Eventually what will happen is that the issue will turn into what we have for phone usage, companies that care about whether or not you use the company phone on company time will be the ones that care if you use the companies Internet on company time.
...of the Clerks reference to the contractors working on the Death Star. Most of 'em weren't in league with the Evil Empire. Hell, most of them probably didn't even care of Lord Vader. They were just "doing their jobs"
Not saying you are culpable, Kondoor, or part of the corrupt system which little-by-little robs each of us of our freedom. No way. Wouldn't say that at all. CERTAINLY wouldn't note that it is very conventient, this distinction you make between what "your employer" wants and what *YOU* want. No sir. That would be rude. And I, for one, am not rude.
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
The government's only concern is that I'm committing a crime - the reason is irrelevant at that point. Whether I'm stealing money to pay for my gambling habit (legal) or my drug habit (illegal) the only relevant fact is that I'm committing armed robbery. Either way, as far as the government is concerned, as long as I'm not holding up the local 7-11 it's none of their damn business what I smoke, be it hash or the lawn clipping from my yard.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
As long as corporations require me to go in a cup so they can search my piss, I will consider my right to privacy to be dead, regardless of whether they check their firewall logs or not.
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We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
In Berne Convention countries (which includes the United States, and has since 1988 I believe), everything you write is automatically copyrighted, merely by your act of creating it.
This has included letters in the past.
In other words, private email you send is (probably) copyrighted as a matter of course. There'd be an implied license allowing delivery servers to copy it for the purposes of delivery, but that would be it.
I don't know of any rulings before the courts on this yet, but it's bound to happen, and I think that's what'll happen.
So in other words, yes, the original poster would be right. Encrypt your email, and anyone who decrypts it without your permission is decrypting a copyrighted item. Oops.
A lot of Americans haven't yet fully grasped the Berne Convention. Before the U.S. joined the Berne Convention, it was a registration-only copyright system, where in order to get a copyright on something, you had to register it, while the rest of the western world used optional registration.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
A lot of employers, especially the kind with a lot of employees, will not search individual employees' email as a matter of course. What they will do is run keyword searches on everybody's email. PGP defeats that.
Also, it stops them from digging through your email and finding cause for dismissal there, though it will make them suspicious.
And finally, one never has to pray for a dumb employer. They grow on trees. See the nearest PHB.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
heh. dword?
look everyone, it's 32 bits with two edges! :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Besides, the DMCA makes no distinction that: you made your security easier to crack so lawsuits would be easier to generate.
I'm not sure I see it this way. It seems to me that using the office PC/network is no different than using the office phone/line. If you make personal calls (toll or otherwise), management will certainly want to know about it. They may or may not want to monitor such calls, and while that is pushing the limit in my book, it seems that it should be their right. Maybe disclosure on this policy should be required though.
/. when appropriate without worrying about it.
So with monitoring/restricting your 'net access, it's their equipment/bandwidth, and I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to monitor what you do. Reading your email is, again, borderline (IMO), but still, maybe with proper disclosure, it should be their right.
Now, as for the issue of creating distrust and causing other problems in the workplace that another poster mentioned, I fully agree. Really, if an employee needs to be monitored, he or she probably doesn't need to be there at all. Then the rest of us can read
With that said, I wouldn't work for a company with such strict policies, or for one who monitored such activity. That's my right, I don't have to work there if I don't like their policies -- just as it should be their right to *have* such policies, if they can get anyone to work for them. I'm not disagreeing that this type of monitoring sucks, I'm only disagreeing about whether the company has the right to monitor such activity.
- Jman
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
The major problem is that courts have held companies liable for their employee's conduct, even when that conduct is against company policy. Therefore, we MUST scan our email for anything that could be remotely deemed offensive, or we risk being sued. If we choose to respect privacy, then we open ourselves up to massive liability.
We need laws protecting employers from liability if an employee refuses to report misconduct. Then we could do away with some of the scanning and observing technologies we have (which cost us quiet a bit... many thousands.) If someone receives an offensive message, reports it, and nothing happens, ONLY then should the company be responsible for it. But the way the courts have ruled up to this point, simply not performing active scanning of email is an admission of guilt.
-- russ
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
i work for a company that makes monitoring software. My job: go on the internet, go to lots of sites, talk to people on AIM, ICQ, etc. read and write lots of email and all i have to do is make sure everything gets recorded. lovin every minute of it ;)
Judge Rosenbaum makes some interesting points in his article, however one that seems to have ben missed is the difference between computers and any older technique for information storage.
No one would object (in a legal sense) if an employer chose to open the file cabinet next to an employees desk and examine the documents within, as these documents would probably be considered property of the employer.
How is that different than examining the documents on the computer the employer has provided for my use durring my employment? Well, in several key areas: first, computers are much more versitile than the file cabinet in that they have the capability to perform thousands of operations that the paper and pencil would not facilitate (like web serfing for the purpose of evaluating reviews of an OSS version of a product competing with that of my company), as wel las many others from communicating with my son, to buying groceries if I so choose. Some of these activities are work related and some are not.
Searching the computer becomes less like riflingthrough the file cabinet and more like searching the company car which I drive to work in every day. While it does belong to the company, it is a common practive for me to use it for non-work relatd personal activities like picking my son up from soccer practice (which is why there's a Power Rangers toy in the back seat).
The point is, when employees are given tools with vast flexibility and power then employees are given a certain level of responsibility to behave appropriately. By extension the employee is also given a level of autonomy to use the device (wether it be a computer or a car) in a manner he sees fit. Judge Rosenbaum suggests that the grant of this authority to the employee comes with a set of additional rights to privacy with respect to the device/tool in question.
If my employer did not trust me I would be provided with a paper and pencil, with which I could perform no other function than my specified job function and no-one would have any problem with the employer viewing the documents I had created with the pencil over the course of the work day.
The proposal here is: With the grant of powerful devices such as computers to employees, comes a grant of authority, autonomy and privacy with regard to the use of such devices.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Suspicious that my online communications were being monitored (esp. as regards criticism of management), I actually installed PGP at work. We have a keyring of about six people and it enables us to vent freely online without threat of retribution. The ring had to deinstall its PGP apps recently to get around a third-party security audit, but we'll be reinstalling as soon as the audit is through. This has worked fine and it has made the rank-and-file employees breathe a lot easier.
<sarcasm>but, like, its our RIGHT to surf the web download porn and play games, I dont care if like im being paid to work its my right to slackoff waisting valuble company time and bandwith, its Information! it wants to be free!</sarcasm>
this isnt new people you pritty much lose your right to privacy when your no longer in a private place private places are basicly limmited to house/apartment and public restrooms(for the most part)
The phone company owns the wires that carry your conversations. So I guess they have the right to "listen in," since you're using their equipment?
It's not quite that bad, yet, but the courts have ruled the the phone company has the right to sell your phone records; i.e. who you call, how often, and so on. This got some coverage on EPIC , where somebody did their homework and linked to these articles on Wired, MSN, and The New York Times.
Back to the issue: The boss, who "owns your time," wants to make sure he's getting all he's paid for. What's next? No posting of Dibert cartoons on your cubicle, since your co-workers will waste precious man-hours chuckling? No newspapers in tne bathroom, since they tend to encourage extra-long bathroom breaks? No more decaf?
I'm not saying that companies should or shouldn't have an absolute right to record your phone calls, read all your email, and require you to be fingerprinted. I am saying that micro-managerial, reactive approaches to eliminating "wasted time" seldom work. Happy employees free to spend a few moments surfing the web or answering a personal email will be more productive than unhappy employees living in fear of a draconian computer use policy.
I had a co-worker once get around the sysadmin god's tracking systems (better known as the extortion system) by using a remote access system like VNC or PC Anywhere. Our company prohibits visiting restricted sites through the company network, but not through your own.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
A job is not a right, a natural resource, or any other egalitarian ideal. It is an agreement to work for pay. Conditions can, and should, come with such agreements. Next time, don't sign on with any companies that reserve the right to fire employees who can't be bothered to look for porn on their own time.
Robert Hutchinson
Robert Hutchinson
Smash it. Smash it good.
Well, seems I'm the minority spending most of my time online reading Slashdot or just downloading things in the background.
Oh well. That's the perks of a summer student job designing and maintaining a website for a small town. If I were to get a serious job, though, I imagine it would change. As far as monitoring employee traffic, I don't think it's uncalled for, it's exactly the same as using security cameras in a grocery store to watch employees. The only adverse thing it does is give off a serious impression of distrust in your employee morals and work habits.
But then again, reading slashdot and downloading hardcore Pr0n at work are two completely different sides of the same coin.
- Relativistic? That's barely Newtonian!
"You have no right to privacy when using company equipment. When I pay for your time and own the equipment, I reserve the right to monitor how you use it."
But the reality is that you're just another MCSE on a power trip after they told you where to click for the web proxy logs and what plugin extension to install in Exchange Server to intercept emails.
BTW... Some of the people tried to pull a stunt like that where I work. They wanted to install censorware on the web proxy and were thinking out loud about intercepting email. What's more they were accusing other people in the company of not working hard enough... Well... Since we're an e-commerce company I briefed upper management on why it is not a good idea to use censorware - some products actually block our company's homepage(!) and I also explained what it would mean if they were also to block our services... Well... the people who were pushing for censorware and email interception got their asses kicked _really_ hard for worrying about bullshit and not doing their work.
Now that you've done reading this, do re-read your job description.
Even with the best of intentions or supposed legal protections, your messages will be burning a hole in a company controlled hard drive or backup tape long after you're gone. They could be pulled into the public spotlight even for unrelated subpoenas served to your company. Regardless of what the policies or laws say, common sense still says that it's wise to exercise a little prudence.
Several people have mentioned using encryption at work on their personal files, email, etc.... However, a lot of companies, several that I have worked for, as well as goverenment agencies have computer use policies that forbid the use of encryption software on their computers except for company business. Using it for any other purpose can be grounds for termination especially if you refuse to give the company the key to decrypt it as part of an investigation. It's something to be aware of if you go sown that path.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
For those who can't do this, or can't affort anonymous proxy & e-mail services, I'd suggest you not do it as long as the courts say it all belongs to the boss man.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
I would love to see that argument hold up... "Honestly, officer, I was decrypting the copy protection on my Matrix DVD to make sure that they weren't using any of my copyrighted material!"
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
If you encrypt all your email and use SSL for all communications, then as long as the DMCA stands, your employer can't spy on you without a jail sentence. People need to start encrypting things, not just your secret stuff, everything. Until we start doing this as a country and it catches on, we'll alwyas have to worry about who is looking over our shoulder no matter where we are...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Well then, what should I do at work ? Read newspapers and books ? What, are we supposed to be limited to dark ages technology just because we came to work and get paid like good citizens ? I'd rather go on welfare and surf from home all day long.
The phone company owns the wires that carry your conversations. So I guess they have the right to "listen in," since you're using their equipment?
No, because you're paying for the use of those lines. A better analogy would be the phone company giving you a free phone line, and then paying you $25 an hour to use it. Then they would have the right to monitor it.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
Your company may have the right to search the file drawer in your desk (every co. I've worked for has had that provision in the employment contract), but do they have the right to search your purse (backpack) sitting in it? Not in any company I've worked for.
To take this even further, should they be able to search your pockets? Your rectum (better use Memory Sticks for those secrets; Compact Flash cards are gonna hurt!), your urine (whoops, too late)? The crud under your fingernails?
The "wrapper of privacy" may seem arbitrary or silly, but don't you feel more comfortable having it? Wouldn't it be nice if it extended to your computer?
>>I mean, whats the big deal, unless you have something to hide?? Well, it seems to me that if you have ANYTHING that indicates you have idle time at work, your employers could use that against you, claiming that it is evidence of your unproductivity. In other words, innocent surfing could theoretically get you fired, in some companies... Not to mention the possibility of temporary files from popup and popunder ads on innocuous sites.
- Duration
By doing this, we allow management to see what employees are doing with their time while hiding the specific URL. I think this balances the pros and cons as well as possible. So now when a supervisor gets his/her report, it shows User A spent 35 minutes on a "Health" site, but doesn't disclose whether that site is www.pfizer.com or www.fitness.comI'm not drunk, I just have a speech impediment. And a stomach virus. And an inner ear infection.
Of course, that is a generality, but I believe it holds true for the most part. I mean let's be real, of course you don't want your boss rummaging around your ePorn collection, or viewing your browser history and seeing all those monster.com submissions and perusals. What better way to keep him out then to start chanting "privacy in the work place".
As a note, I am a small business owner. I absolutely depend on the few people who work for me to be as productive as possible. If they're not, it could seriously hurt the solvency of the organization. I'll say though, that I am a pretty fair guy. I have no problem with routine personal email and phone calls. I would draw the line though on excessive personal use of company resources.
Fantazem (cuz someone else took my old nick!)
what about drug testing for the school bus driver that you trust with the life of your child? Though I don't plan on breeding, ever, (and actually have a strong dislike for most children I meet) I can see why this is a perfectly reasonable example of appropriate manditory employee drug tests.
thats the good thing about surfing from work, though....high-speed connection :)
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practically an AC