Slashdot Mirror
NJ Court Upholds Privacy of Personal Emails At Work
chiguy sends word of a ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court which found that a company did not have the right to read emails from an employee's personal account even through the account was accessed on a company computer. This ruling is likely to set precedent for other workplace privacy cases around the country.
"'The court has recognized the very legitimate and real concerns with regards to privacy. This gives some guidance to employers in terms of how explicit (e-mail) policies need to be,' [attorney Marvin Goldstein] said. The ruling stems from a harassment and discrimination lawsuit Marina Stengart of Bergen County filed three years ago against Loving Care of Ridgefield Park. Stengart, then the executive director of nursing, sent her attorney eight e-mails from her company-loaned laptop about her issues with her superiors. Stengart used her Yahoo e-mail account. 'Under all of the circumstances, we find that Stengart could reasonably expect that e-mails she exchanged with her attorney on her personal, password-protected, web-based e-mail account, accessed on a company laptop, would remain private,' Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in the decision, which upholds an appeals court’s ruling last year."
a company did not have the right to read emails from an employee's personal account even through the account was accessed on a company computer.
I agree with the general principle - if someone doesn't use the company account there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy for a personal webmail account. However she still may be violating company policy about using work assets for personal affairs. The computer is owned by the company and they have every right to reprimand her for making the emails regardless of the content.
The data exists on the company's computers, likely passed through their network and servers, and because of these things they are legally accesible by the company. Unless the company accessed her email account at Yahoo using this data, there doesn't seem to be an issue to me. Unfortunately, the article is sparse on the details. Only an idiot would think, in these times, that the things they do on their company PC or laptop would not be accisible by the company. Just because they issue you a system doesn't make that system yours - its theirs, including all its contents.
A person has no reason to expect anonymity on a computer or network that is not their own.
That's rather like saying you have no reason to expect privacy because you rent an apartment instead of owning a house. You send letters through the postal service which is a network you don't own either but you still have an expectation of privacy in many cases. I'm not sure the logic of your argument is on solid footing there.
I agree that she was probably naive in assuming that the company couldn't read her correspondence. Many people assume email is much more private than it actually is. Ignorant but probably nothing worse.
MARINA STENGART v. LOVING CARE AGENCY, INC., [and others]
http://www.employerlawreport.com/uploads/file/Steingart%20v_%20Loving%20Care.pdf
As part of the employment relationship, the company
provided plaintiff with a laptop computer and a work email
address. Prior to her resignation, plaintiff communicated with
her attorneys, Budd Larner, P.C., by email. These communications
pertained to plaintiff's anticipated suit against the company,
and were sent from plaintiff's work-issued laptop but through
her personal, web-based, password-protected Yahoo email account.
After plaintiff filed suit, the company extracted and
created a forensic image of the hard drive from plaintiff's
[New Page]
computer. In reviewing plaintiff's Internet browsing history,
an attorney at Sills Cummis discovered and, as he later
certified, "read numerous communications between [plaintiff] and
her attorney from the time period prior to her resignation from
employment with [the company]." Sills Cummis did not advise
Budd Larner that the image extracted from the hard drive
included these communications.
Many months later, in answering plaintiff's
interrogatories, the company referenced and included some of
plaintiff's emails with her attorneys.
That sounds like the type of shit that should get the company lawyer disbarred.
Reading the facts of the case, I'm not at all surprised the Judge ruled the way he did.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The company did have their usage policies written out and the court noted that they explicitly said "occasional personal use is permitted."
So she didn't violate the company's acceptable use policy.
If the company policy had said that personal use is never permitted, the court might well have ruled differently.
Instead, the court should have asked: if Stengart had left a written letter to her attorney in her desk when she left Loving Care, could Loving Care have used that letter in preperation for court cases?
Actually, if the letter was still in a sealed, addressed envelope... Then she could reasonably expect that the company would not be able to open it and read the contents, much less use anything they read in court. If the letter was NOT sealed it would be a different story.
IANAL, but I would think that the correlation of sealed envelope -> password protected personal email account would be an easy one to make.
First of all there is NOTHING in the Constitution explicitly protecting privacy. Nothing. Everything relating to privacy in the Constitution has been inferred. Go ahead and read it. You won't find the word privacy or anything like it mentioned even once.
The fourth and ninth amendments taken together. See also the fourteenth.
$ make available
If she left a sealed, stamped letter to her lawyer I would expect them NOT to open it. If she talked to her lawyer and the company overheard the conversation, I would expect their knowledge gained to be like unto "fruit of the poisoned tree", and disallowed. There is a big difference between what you CAN do and what you are ALLOWED to do. People who do what isn't ALLOWED because they realize they CAN, in a country under the rule of law, should expect to be punished when they are caught.
Since Federal law always trumps state law, you're wrong. A State can no more restrict my freedom of speech any more than the Feds could.