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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
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.
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.
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.
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.