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EU Companies Can Monitor Employees' Private Conversations While At Work (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A recent ruling of the European Court of Human Rights has granted EU companies the right to monitor and log private conversations that employees have at work while using the employer's devices. The ruling came after a Romanian was fired for using Yahoo Messenger back in 2007, while at work, to have private conversations with his girlfriend. He argued that his employer was breaking his right for privacy and correspondence. Both Romanian and European courts disagreed.
If you want to argue with your girlfriend, use your own cellphone. Jesus.
9 years later, we have a court ruling on common sense.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
Is it enough to RTFA to discover whether he was fired for the having non work related conversations during work or for the actual content of those conversations?
Because I see some difference between monitoring the activity and monitoring the content.
I have no problem with some using work equipment for talking to his girlfriend, but if your employer shows a 45-page report of your conversations I think they were trying to say "get off Yahoo Messenger and do some work dammit!" It depends on the time you waste IMHO
Before everybody gets in a big huff, this applies only to devices the employer owns and lets employees use, not personal devices employees bring to work. The title here is slanted and a little misleading...
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The information presented here is, indeed, grossly miseading. There is no such thing as an employer's right to monitor private communications in the EU; on the contrary, at leastmin some European countries, like, say, Germany, illegitimately monitoring an employee's private communocation may actually land someone in jail.
Don't use your company's email or other stuff for personal business. It's unprofessional, and you might get your personal communications subpoenaed should your company be involved in a court case.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
what was his favourite IDE?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...
This was settled long ago in the US. Do your private stuff with your own communication equipment, preferably off company premises.
Come on, timothy. Wake up!
1. This has nothing to do with the EU.
2. Whether or not your employer can monitor your activity depends upon national laws. The ECHR ruling simply states that Romanian law (or rather, this specific application of it) doesn't violate the convention.
Most international and US domestic employees include clauses in the employee contract that explicitly permit company monitoring of content on work owned or devices, including work owned telephones and networks. There is effectively no "private communication" on your corporate laptop or machines you use for work.
All reports miss an important part.
Nobody went out to look at this guys private messages. During the course of an investigation into his performance at work some private messages were discovered. He argued that this alone was a violation of his privacy. The judge decided that the employer did the right thing. The employer was not intentionally looking for private messages and he did not read them when he discovered they were of a private nature.
This is not a cart-blanche to spy on employee's.
The information presented here is, indeed, grossly miseading. There is no such thing as an employer's right to monitor private communications in the EU; ....
Can you clarify if you mean companies cannot monitor computer and phone usage on their own systems?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
The information presented here is, indeed, grossly miseading. There is no such thing as an employer's right to monitor private communications in the EU; on the contrary, at leastmin some European countries, like, say, Germany, illegitimately monitoring an employee's private communocation may actually land someone in jail.
We do, but not on company equipment: The upper court of Berlin and Brandenburg ruled on that, and so did the one in Hamm.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
As some already reported, this is a highly misleading headlines.
1. It's not EU, but ECHR, so much wider (it includes non-EU countries such as Russia or Turkey).
2. The ECHR sets a minimal amount of human rights protection, not a maximal one - ECHR saying "we don't have any objection about it" doesn't mean it's legal in all ECHR countries, national government can pass higher levels of protection if they want.
3. The ruling itself doesn't say "it's all fine to spy on employees in general", it said that in that specific case it's fine - it was a work mail account (not a private one), ...
I advise you to read http://modulus.isonomia.net/la... for example, that gives a more detailed analysis on the ruling and reporting of it.
IANAL - they can monitor for diagnostic purposes only. That means they can log the websites you visit (e.g. datetime, URL), but certainly not the content. They can log message traffic (from/to/date/time/size/...) but certainly not message content.
I can only agree that most media, including slashdot, is bringing this story completely wrong. As far as I understood: there is no general right to monitor private communications, not even on corporate equipment. There are exceptions which allow employers to do logging of what could be private communications.
In short, the court found that the right to privacy (in the European Convention of Human Rights) is not breached by a law that permits companies monitoring communications from their equipment. This means that the Romanian law (that permits such monitoring) complies with the treaty. The German law (which, AIUI, forbids such monitoring) obviously complies with the treaty because it doesn't permit others to read personal correspondence.
Does this give employers the right to perform MitM attacks if the employees use what they think are encrypted links? Slippery slope if your employer is a service provider and owns various public network backbones...
Most international and US domestic employees include clauses in the employee contract that explicitly permit company monitoring of content on work owned or devices, including work owned telephones and networks. There is effectively no "private communication" on your corporate laptop or machines you use for work.
And in much of Europe the employer would be breaking the law (wiretapping) if they did such monitoring. Ownership of the "thing" the employee is using isn't the issue here. I've worn plenty of work clothes owned by the company, does that mean that the company can ask me to strip? Or perhaps a better analogue, ask me to empty my pockets? Since, after all it's company owned equipment and I can expect any privacy as to the content of my pockets?
I, and fortunately the lawmakers where I live and work, think not.
Stefan Axelsson
monitoring an employee's private communocation may actually land someone in jail.
Pure fantasy (what are you, twelve?)
Reality(tm) goes something like this:
Dear Wage Slave,
The purpose of the laws is to control YOU, not to embarrass your owners.
Now get back to work!
Signed,
The Boss.
Buy one share of company stock, and bug the management and record all of their conversations and emails. After all, you are an owner of the company and have the right to know what goes on with executives, management and other owners. Let the courts play with why one group has more rights than an owner who also happens to be an employee.
Dunno about your company, but mine is pretty adamant about letting you know that "The use of this computer system and / or network is subject to monitoring at all times" and that, by utilizing it, you consent to such monitoring. It's pretty much the gist of the login banner every morning. It's also present in every single device I log into throughout the day.
If you want to talk to your $person via IM, do it with your own device. Don't use company assets to do it with. Even if you get clever and encrypt the messages, they won't find it amusing and will probably just fire you. Corporate security doesn't like to come across emails and / or messages they can't read.
Can they? What is this magic?
Europeans are slow like that... LOL
Slow courts are not a uniquely European phenomenon.
Most international and US domestic employees include clauses in the employee contract that explicitly permit company monitoring of content on work owned or devices, including work owned telephones and networks. There is effectively no "private communication" on your corporate laptop or machines you use for work.
And those clauses would in invalid in Germany and many other countries and any company trying to enforce it would be commiting crimes.
Such as a closed circuit camera mic? If the employer owns it and an employee gets close, technically they're using it, could be useful for your next employee review especially if they search for key words, facial expressions, body positions, and watch the highlights
Twinstiq, game news
Most international and US domestic employees include clauses in the employee contract that explicitly permit company monitoring of content on work owned or devices, including work owned telephones and networks. There is effectively no "private communication" on your corporate laptop or machines you use for work.
And those clauses would in invalid in Germany and many other countries and any company trying to enforce it would be commiting crimes.
... unfortunately. Why is "work resources = work-related matters" so unreasonable?
So there are no anti-spam solutions or web application firewalls in Germany?
I work for 2 companies. (hired by one, doing projects for another)
One has recently changed the policy and has explicitly forbidden using emails for private needs.
But it can't just go and monitor my emails, what can happen at most is that if employee isn't available (say, ill) yet someone needs to urgently take over hist duties, mailbox could be used by the other person.
There are some funny rules too, it is prohibited to watch porn using your company notebook even if not working/at home. (afraid of viruses?)
This kind of "seeing previous guys emails" thing wasn't possible before, isn't possible now at the other company.
Neither of the two companies is allowed to monitor what employees are doing at work (e.g. watching what's going on on your screen) if management would dare to try to change it, trade unions would start one hell of a shit storm.
Most international and US domestic employees include clauses in the employee contract that explicitly permit company monitoring of content on work owned or devices, including work owned telephones and networks. There is effectively no "private communication" on your corporate laptop or machines you use for work.
And those clauses would in invalid in Germany and many other countries and any company trying to enforce it would be commiting crimes.
... unfortunately. Why is "work resources = work-related matters" so unreasonable?
Because we are not slaves?
In the UK it was estimated that businesses in the EU lost 3Bn a year due to costs of private use of internet connections at work. However, 4 months earlier, a report showed that businesses in the EU saved 30Bn a year due to unpaid overtime (where they may have to phone up their GF and say "I'm going to be working late today").
So, yes, it's your systems, mr employer. However, it's my life. Hire 10% more people rather than demand I make up for your crap time management.
In other places, the whole case was reported substantially different. First it must be said that a company will have the right to find out whether the phone calls you make at work are for business or private, but not to find out the contents of the private messages. On the other hand it should be obvious that a company can examine your work related phone calls.
It seems the company was unhappy with his performance and noticed that he made a lot of phone calls during work time. They asked him about it, and he claimed that these phone calls were all work related and not private. So they had the right to examine these calls, because they were all work related (so he said).
When they were done, he was confronted with 48 pages of transcripts of calls in eight days, all private, and was fired. That was 48 pages. That's a lot of time spent not working.
The title is wrong, both in the original article and in Slashdot summary.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is not a European Union (EU) institution. It stems from the Council of Europe (CoE), a much larger organization that includes 47 states. A lot of them are not part of EU, such as Russia for instance
> And in much of Europe the employer would be breaking the law (wiretapping) if they did such monitoring.
There was a fairly clear recent EU case about just this sort of use of work resources for private communications.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...
Quoting the article:
But on Tuesday the court ruled that it was not "unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours"
I'm afraid that EU privacy laws and practices are widely misunderstood. They are not absolute, and they certainly do not protect employees from workplace monitoring of workpace resources.
We've recently had a case where an employee caused a manufacturing line to shut down for a few hours because he was downloading malware - along with tons of porn. Our legal team decided it is unclear, under EU and local law, to terminate him based on improper use of hardware, and it wasn't clear if we were able to monitor what he was doing with the PC, and whether it was during breaks or working hours. Long story short, he was terminated for a trivial infraction.
Needless to say, a contract between employee and employer can never void any laws stipulated by local legislation. Which, in case of at least some European countries, still favors individual privacy protection over corporate greed. Good for us.
I'm afraid that EU privacy laws and practices are widely misunderstood.
No argument there. Quoting from your own citation:
"The employer acted within its disciplinary powers since, as the domestic courts found, it had accessed the Yahoo Messenger account on the assumption that the information in question had been related to professional activities and that such access had therefore been legitimate."
Tom De Cordier, a lawyer at CMS DeBacker in Brussels, said the court had taken a "very liberal stance".
He said: "Much of the courtâ(TM)s decision seems to be based on the fact that the employee had claimed that the relevant communications were of a professional nature."
The case in question was one where the company had accessed communications in the belief that they were not private, as the culprit claimed they weren't. The court, when challenged, then said that that was not unreasonable (as I assume most would agree), as that it was reasonable to then take that information into account (which is dodgier but I'll let it slide for now). But as you're taught in the corporate world here in Sweden if you clearly mark something as "private" (say a folder on your networked storage account), the company is in deep doo-doo if they access it. Same as with mail. If it's adressed with my name above, the company name (and adress below), then you'd formally be breaking the law if you opened it and weren't the named person. Doesn't matter one iota if the company has clearly stated that you can't use company resources to send or receive mail. Oh, they can bitch and moan, but they can't open letters that aren't adressed to them, that's a clear violation of the law (and there are cases to prove it).
This case is one where the company reasonably didn't understand that the communication was of a private nature. If they had tried to e.g. listen in on phone calls without that being completely clear beforehand they would be in a completely different situation.
Now, exactly where the line is drawn when it comes to network monitoring, no-one knows, as there aren't many, or even any, cases yet. But that fact alone points to the corporations knowing that they're in a weak position. They always use something else, such as non-performance of duties, when it comes to the court.
Stefan Axelsson