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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."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Then don't do it on company resources.
In that situation, you should consider anything the company owns as being enemy territory - and consider it the same as talking to your union rep while the boss is in the room. Find some other way. There are plenty. Maybe take your laptop to a starbucks and send an email there.
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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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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