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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.
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.
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
warning: may seem sexist but it's my experience
in my experience, it was always the women who used company email for private communication. as a former admin of such things, it annoyed the hell out of me. whenever a new employee took over an old mailbox (with a new name alias), they had to (for years) deal with stupid emails about - Mindy's wedding, Georgina's ugly baby, meet me for coffee beautiful, my period is late, etc. i never understood why they did it. they were always told to keep their mailboxes in a condition that would allow other people to use them in their absence, yet without exception, they treated their mailboxes like personal property and cursed me to hell for letting other people access their emails. i hated that job. people... what a bunch of bastards.
Because you agreed to an acceptable use policy when using that companies equipment and services, this includes but is not limited to, your workstation and NETWORK. Sorry, you already agreed to whatever terms they decide to implement. You don't watch porn on your work machine and network, do you? You don't pirate software on your companies computer do you? Why? Because it's morally objectionable, or more to the point, because you know it's wrong and an improper use of the equipment and services. The only person complaining about this is the person wanting to get paid to sext and snapchat.
Well you could, and I do, argue this extends to the network, so if you are on your personal device but using THEIR network, the ruling still applies. That said, I really doubt this gives them the right to break encryption or demand the keys. It's not the content of the discussion really, it's about the wasted time they got paid for.
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.