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In Australia, Bosses May Get Power To Snoop On Emails
Numerous readers noted the proposal by the Australian government for legislation to allow employers to snoop on employees' email and IM conversations. This is being proposed in the name of protecting the infrastructure from terrorism. The attorney-general cited the Estonian cyber-attacks as a reason why such employer monitoring is necessary in Australia — never mind that the attacks were perpetrated by a lone 20-year-old and not by a foreign government or terrorist. The law permitting intelligence agencies to snoop on citizens without permission expires this June, leading to the government's urgency to extend and expand it. The chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia said, "These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' emails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure. I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts... If an employer wanted to [sack] someone, they could use these powers."
I had no idea it was illegal now! Here in the US it's like if you don't own the computer cuz it's a work computer and you're on the work's connection, they can spy on you all you want. It seems completely logical to me and not even really an invasion of privacy cuz you should be ohhhh you know, DOING WORK lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
can't you already do this in the states?
If the company owns the machines and the network, then the company is able and allowed to watch everything you do - particularly if you signed an employment agreement consenting to it.
This is not news. Frankly sometimes I think privacy advocates overreact - and I think this is one of those times.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
At home, on a LAN separate from the Internet.
This is a sig. It is appended to the end of comments I post.
Also in NZ. It makes complete sense! They have every right to see what is going on inside their own company, and what activity is going on inside their network.
Funny story - where I work there is a very liberal network use policy - you can use it how you like as long as your manager is happy with your work and you don't shut the network down.
Someone shut the network down, I think with a P2P site.
The network guys sit right next to me. They were having a great time tracking down the culprit. And even funnier is people were coming out of the woodwork saying "my bad!" when it wasn't even them!
But I was very much OK with that. That person was saturating the network connection and stopping real work from getting done.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
make yourself a linux box not connected to the internet with two accounts, send an email from one account to the other ... make sure you close the blinds so no person can read your screen and keyboard.
to code or not to code, that is the question.
Um, hi. My name is Bryan. I run a business in Canada. It's my business and I'm accountable for everything that it does -- as an officer of the corporation. And yeah, you'd better believe that I read my employees' e-mails. How on Earth would you expect me to be accountable for something that I don't know is occurring? There are plenty of ways to get an e-mail address. The one that I give to my employee is for business, it's a convenient tool.
And it's no different than the paper "inbox" on their desk -- which is, of course, also owned by me, both the box and the desk itself. And the fact that it's clean.
Oh, but it you're using a CRT, make sure you're in a faraday cage too. And I'm not sure what they can do as far as listening on LCD displays, but I'm sure there's something.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Bah. You should not be sending personal emails through a business address for exactly this reason. It's not the fault of the business for snooping, but the fault of the employee for being stupid.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
You should use https://www.gmail.com for a secure connection
If you're using your employer's resources, they have the right to monitor anything on their systems that they damn well please.
What the heck would you expect?
If you're worried about it, don't use company resources for personal access. Is this really so hard to understand?
Sheesh. This liberal feeling of entitlement has gone way too far.
In reality, many employers don't care what you do, as long as it isn't illegal or interfering with the quality of work. However, they do retain the right to intervene if they feel it's necessary.
Hey, take it easy on the MCSE :)
Sam ty sig.
Its not so much the new rules that anger me, for employers have previously just asked you to sign an agreement giving them that right, its that way they are introduced as to "fight terrorism". If I was osama I would be laughing my head of every time a new law is introduced to fight terrorism. We are just handing them moral victory after victory and they are just sitting in a cave somewhere.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Technology will overtake this. When everyone has an iPhone or like in their pocket, who is going to send potentially compromising emails through their employer?
No they don't. In fact, in most of the world, they aren't allowed to spy on you without your consent. The USA just has a pathetic lack of privacy laws. Judging from your post and others like it, they've also brainwashed the population into accepting it. I don't want my freedom eroded any more than it already has been.
Time to make sure my PGP certificate is still working ....
Then you take out your trusty knoppix CD and boot the machine into a Linux session before connecting to your g-mail account. Unless they are monitoring the computer at the hardware level (unlikely) then you are secure in the knowledge that that particular communication will remain private.
IANAL, but my understanding is that it is already legal for employers to monitor any and all use of employees emails, IM, etc. The company owns the computers so they can do what they want with them. There is no distinction between work-related and personal emails if they were sent or received using company resources.
The Attorney-General says otherwise which is a surprise to me, and also I'm sure to much of the business and legal community. The legal advice to several businesses I've worked at, is that they are well within rights to intercept employee emails.
Any Australian lawyers that can comment on this?
As a small business owner in Australia, I would like to make it clear that I would never read my employees' emails even if I thought they were stealing from me. I consider privacy invasion to be wrong, and as the phrase goes, two wrongs don't make a right. Invading privacy to stop them stealing is as wrong as breaking into their house to steal back whatever they took.
It is not possible for employees, in the modern day and age, to sterilise themselves personally when they walk into the workplace. They still have friends they talk to, they still have families they think about, they still have pressing non-work issues they need to deal with. Expecting this to all disappear at 9am and reappear at 5:30pm is unreasonable, and as a business owner, I don't expect it of my staff, even though (assuming it's even possible which it isn't) it may increase productivity.
If I have an issue with a staff member stealing or doing something else that breaks the boundaries or law or morality, I don't want to deal with that issue by breaking the boundaries of law or morality. I can and will intervene to protect my business, but only if I don't violate their rights in the process. I have yet (in 8 years) to come across a scenario where I was not able to protect myself and still follow this principle. I don't believe I ever will. This experience affirms my belief that one does NOT have to trade freedom and/or morality for security and/or order.
Sheesh. This feeling of "anything goes" in the pursuit of security and law and order has gone way too far.
I hate printers.
It's not about fighting terrorism. It never was. It's about power pooling into the hands of the few.
I hate printers.
If a person isn't comfortable being watched by the people that are paying him to do the job, he is always free to quit and not be paid for it.
If a company doesn't like to observe a countries privacy laws - well too bad then, they have to do it anyway. Companies don't have rights, people do.
I am not a small business owner, but I work at a small business in the US, and I would just add that at my company, there's little to no privacy. There are only about 15 people, and if someone is out sick, on vacation, on a business trip, etc--someone else will read their email to see if there's anything that has to be replied to immediately.
This goes for the bosses computer+email too.
There have never been any problems that I've heard of--I mean the general standard is, if you're reading someones email and you see its personal, dont read it. Just look at the business email. Not always possible, but it hasn't been a problem in my experience.
I don't really think most people use their business addresses for personal email very often incidentally--everyone seems to use yahoo/gmail/whatever. (I know I do)
I go to great lengths to keep my work and personal lives separate. If work wants to get in touch with me when I'm not on-site, they can call my company-issued Blackberry. Aside from HR, which is not allowed to pass around my contact information, and my manager, who I trust to not pass around the information I allow to him, no one has my home phone number, and no one at all has my personal cell number.
If my friends or family want to get in touch with me when I'm at work, they can call me on my personal cell phone. If they want to send an note, they can use my Gmail account. They don't get my work phone numbers or e-mail address.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Its not so much that he cares about civil liberties, champ (can I call you champ?) its that he is a terrorist, and his main job is screw with your head. When people are willing to be inconvenienced, champ, for the sake of protection from terrorism - he has succeeded for he has made an negative impact on your life. Now whether or not osama really knows or cares about this is largely irrelevant.
P.S. I'm not sure what sort of intellectual masturbation led you to assume I empathise with osama but rest assured that its wrong.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
First I rang my local member, who referred me to Julia Gillard's office (she made the original idiotic statements). Her office referred me to the Attorney-General's office, as that's where it's coming from.
The nice functionary I spoke to there said it's a media beatup. Under Australian law it's illegal to intercept the communications of a third party without a warrant. There was some wondering about whether passing emails through a virus scan qualified as warrantless interception.
Rather than going through some court case about to settle the matter, it was felt that it would be easier just to amend the Telecommunications Interception Act instead.
So that's it. There's actually no story here at all. Though it did provoke me to write an angry rant before I started doing what the journalists should have done in the first place - check the facts.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
I agree with this. The lines are a little more blurry - they have my cell and home numbers. But if someone calls it and it's not an emergency they get yelled at. My boss even told me, if I'm not on call, I don't have to take any work calls after hours - *especially* because my phone is not company issued.
I'm never on call, at least for now.
In principle, though, I'm with you. If the site isn't down in such a way that I'm the only one that can fix it - they can leave me alone, and they know it.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Additionally, if acts that protect from terrorism WORK (and I'm not going to assume that they do...but let's just say if) then guess what--he's been stopped from doing what he's been trying to do (that is, terrorist actions). Now whether or not osama really knows or cares about this is largely irrelevant. The first thing you've said I agree with--it IS totally irrelevant! P.S. I'm not sure what sort of intellectual masturbation led you to assume I empathise with osama but rest assured that its wrong. Apologies if you're not a native English speaker and have misunderstood what I meant--I didn't mean to imply anything like you seem to think I did. The OED definition of empathy is "The power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation" and to empathize is to do this. In simpler terms, it's putting yourself in someone else's shoes, or seeing the world from their eyes.
So, when I said "I think the fact that that's how you are able to empathize with him" what was meant was that when you try to understand UBL's actions from his point of view, you get something totally off base which doesn't fit with anything UBL/AQ/any other Islamist terrorist group has ever said. Or, in my opinion, you've failed to understand his actions at all.
I think the word you thought I said was "sympathize"
> -- never mind that the attacks were perpetrated by a lone 20-year-old and not by a foreign government or terrorist.
:-) see this link: http://www.epl.ee/artikkel/392271
This quote is far from reality. The lone 20-year-old was the only one who got convicted, because he was the only russian caught who
lived in Estonia. Meanwhile the bulk of the attackers got away, because they live in Russia. And russia don't extradite their citizens (remember the Litvinenko case?). If you can read estonian,
A crude translation: On june 28th 2007, the reply from russian authorities denied all help to estonian government regarding the cyber-attack investigations.
...It's called, "I own the equipment and I'm paying for your time, so you have no expectation of privacy. Deal with it!"
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
Dear Australian government,
Since you are so eager to protect your country from evil bearded terrorists, I would like to suggest some other sensible measures:
- employers can beat their employees with a stick whenever they do something suspicious ('suspicious' should be left vague)
- employers can impound the passports of foreign or poor employees and lock them up all day in overcrowded shacks with no airconditioning.
- employers can strip-search male AND female employees for dangerous substances that could be used for making bombs.
- employers can cut of the beards of their employees, especially when they have darker skin or look suspicious in any other way.
I am sure this will make your society more harmonious and safe.
Its a little different because im hourly, but the principal still applies. If im on the clock, thats their time, and vice versa, i'm a real bastard about it too.
I've been paged to the floor while on my lunch more than a few times, sometimes more than once durring my lunch break. I'm punched out for lunch (company policy) and required to take one (state law) i made my bosses fill out the apropriate paperwork for me to get paid for those interrupted lunch breaks every time. Although personally i'd rather not even take a lunch and not be stuck at work for an hour while not getting paid.
I dont even answer my phone on my days off if i see that its work. One time i was just getting in for the day and my boss said something like "Why didnt you answer your phone yesterday, we coulda really used you, so and so called in." I just laid into him, with the HR lady right there too, i was like
"My days off are MY time, if i dont show up for work on the days i AM scheduled then we have a problem, but i am not coming in other days unless you work something out with me ahead of time. I am NOT on call, and if you want me to be you're gonna have to pay me a salary, starting now."
They havnt called me on a day off since then.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Same goes for a private phone call.
Yet it seems to be normal. There are a lot of valid reasons to make a private call during work.
By your reasoning it's also ok for the employer to check the text message on your mobile phone.
In the end it's all about trust, if your employer doesn't trust you, either you did something wrong or your employer is paranoid.
In that case, is it OK for your employer to open the letter and read it before it leaves the building?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I guess you'd probably agree that employers are not entitled to install cameras in employees restrooms, just as I think we are in agreement that an employer must have the right to monitor the quality of an employees work. The question is where to draw the line. One important aspect is economical necessity - if it's not possible to run a business under the restriction put in place, then those restrictions don't make sense. So that's my view of it: no intrusion beyond what's absolutely necessary. As for snooping on employees: many rich countries don't allow that, so clearly it doesn't fall into that category.
It's a rather absurd approach to management, anyway. If you waste all your time reading employees' emails, you'll lack that time for the work which counts. If you want to run a successful company make sure you have good employees and keep them motivated. Measure the quality of their work, not how they get there. That's not just my opinion, pretty much any management handbook will tell you the same.