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.
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.
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 ?
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.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
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?)
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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
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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.
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?
...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"
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.
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?
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.
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.
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!
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
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."
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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!)