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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.
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.
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.