Privacy of personal emails at work protected in France

guerby writes "On October, 2d the french "Cour de cassation" (France highest court) ruled that a company cannot monitor personal emails without breaking privacy protection offered by the law. The case was between a french engineer and his employer Nikon France. As I couldn't find any article in english on the subject here is one in Le Monde and a discussion on LinuxFR. Of course if you don't do anything but personal email, you can still be fired :)."

Comments

Quick 'n dirty recap

[Teun]

The guy was hired in '91 and signed a non-competition paper.
In '95 an E-mail exchange with a competitor was found out.
The company claimed he agreed on hiring he could only use company supplied equipment for company business, the case went through the various courts.
The result centers around the European Directive on Fundamental Human Rights. According to the court this was breached when the company accessed a folder called "Private" on his computer and found the E-mail with a competitor. The fact that the E-mail did not cover the subject/nature of the guy's employment was also considered.
The court ruled the fundamental freedom of this individual of higher value than the agreament about business-only use of the computer.

The best part of it is that although Jurisprudence does not usually carry weight across borders, the reference to the European Directive is possibly usefull to for example Brits that have little to no protection under national law.