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Privacy of personal emails at work protected in France

Posted by Hemos on from the good-move dept.

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 :)."

3 of 8 comments (clear)

  1. Full ruling URL by guerby · · Score: 2

    Here

    Any URL in english?

  2. Quick 'n dirty recap by Teun · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  3. I've worked in both extremes by Kris_J · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I've worked in a company where email is company property and can be "monitored" at the drop of a hat (with appropriate notification). Email can also be redirected if you're away or handed to your replacement if you leave. This system works really well.

    And I've worked in a company where email is a private thing that the company won't touch. This means that if you're away your incoming email isn't dealt with, regardless of how important it is. This also means that when you leave you have to manually forward every work-related message to another address or the person taking over your job won't have a clue what's going on. This system barely works at all, and completely falls over for positions with a high turnover.

    I believe a company email address is for company stuff and if you want to send and receive non-work-related emails then you should use your own personal account (from your own ISP or a Yahoo/Hotmail sort of thing). I don't understand this obsession with privacy protection on work resources -- even work phone-tap laws are becoming less relivant as more people get mobiles.