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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."
I could use company paper and company pens to write my letter, and mail it with a company stamp. I would be misusing company resources for personal business, but that doesn't give the company the right to read its contents. I could sit on the company toilet and use company water to take a shit, but that doesn't give them the right to watch. I could even be masturbating in there, misusing the time, and they still wouldn't have the right to monitor my activities. They would be in their rights to discipline an employee for taking long breaks and doing who knows what in the restroom, but they wouldn't be allowed to watch their employees to check just how they're spending their time in there. In this case, they can discipline her for misusing company resources, but can't violate the privacy that she has a reasonable expectation of.
On a closer note, it's the same privacy standard as if she'd had the conversation with her lawyer on the company phone -- a misuse of resources, but not within their right to listen in.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
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
How far do we take this logic? Does the company have a right to search an employee's pocketbook because it's sitting in a company-owned office? Can the company take samples of an employee's lunch for drug testing (or health insurance purposes_ because it's sitting in a company-owned refrigerator, powered by company-paid-for electricity? Can a company search an employee's car because it's sitting on a company-owned parking lot?
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.
The company does not have the right to read her personal mail either, but if she wrote it using a company pen or paper she may be violating company policy about using work assets for personal affairs... Or maybe the company phone, or maybe the rental car when she decided to stop at a store on a business trip, etc...
The costs of the items involved, like a personal email, can be minimal to non-existent so it is not about money. These things are not being done in the companies name, so it is not about being a representative of the company. The person is probably an exempt employee, which means that the person is expected to do their job, whatever that is, not punch a clock. As long as the job is getting done, the so called time lost is irrelevant.
These policies are rules made by busy bodies that feel a need to insert their nose into someone's business. That it involves "Company property" is just the excuse. Why these people believe that the companies rights are so superior to the individual is rather pathetic. Especially since the Constitution was really set up to protect the individuals right to privacy, that the government seems so willing to defer that right because a business is involved is very scary.
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]
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"However she still may be violating company policy about using work assets for personal affairs."
Maybe. That's another can of worms. I use my personal computer to work from home. I'm expected to be available every few weeks for a week of "on-call" activity where work can intrude quite firmly into my home.
The line between working at home and "homing" at work, to badly coin a phrase, is getting blurrier every year.
And companies have a choice of either shutting people out of their personal lives completely for 8-10 hours a day (and getting the exact same shutout when those people go home) or learning to be modestly flexible. So far the trend is that companies are learning to bend just a bit.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
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.
On a closer note, it's the same privacy standard as if she'd had the conversation with her lawyer on the company phone
I'm too lazy to get you a citation, but the "lawyer" half isn't necessary - the courts long ago ruled that an employer can not snoop on her phone calls to ANYONE even if she is using a company phone.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
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 you do something on someone else's property, they don't have a right to observe it?
Like use their toilet?
What's stopping her from putting a file into her briefcase/backpack and taking it home and sending it there? What about thumbdrives or synched cell-phones (which allow file-storage)?
Face it, unless the worker is in a secured area, the "need to monitor all traffic to prevent leaks" is borderline paranoiac. There needs to be an appropriate level of trust (this includes carrots and threats-of-sticks) for any worker to be productive.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Ok. But if what she did was wrong "regardless of the content", why did the employer have to read them?
Before she resigned, she was planning to sue the company.
After she resigned and filed her lawsuit, the company went back and dug through her work laptop.
Then the company lawyers quoted, to her, Yahoo e-mails between her and her lawyer...
Which is how the whole thing turned into a clusterfuck.
Unfortunately, this only sets a binding precedent in New Jersey (AFAIK).
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!