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German Court Rules Bosses Can't Use Keyboard-Tracking Software To Spy On Workers (thelocal.de)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Local: The Federal Labour Court ruled on Thursday that evidence collected by a company through keystroke-tracking software could not be used to fire an employee, explaining that such surveillance violates workers' personal rights. The complainant had been working as a web developer at a media agency in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2011 when the company sent an email out in April 2015 explaining that employees' complete "internet traffic" and use of the company computer systems would be logged and permanently saved. Company policy forbade private use of the computers. The firm then installed keylogger software on company PCs to monitor keyboard strokes and regularly take screenshots. Less than a month later, the complainant was called in to speak with his boss about what the company had discovered through the spying software. Based on their findings, they accused him of working for another company while at work, and of developing a computer game for them. [...] So the programmer took his case to court, arguing that the evidence used against him had been collected illegally. The Federal Labour Court agreed with this argument, stating in the ruling that the keylogger software was an unlawful way to control employees. The judges added that using such software could be legitimate if there was a concrete suspicion beforehand of a criminal offense or serious breach of work duties.
Your opinion is irrelevant. This is about law. Internal regulations are never above law. In Europe, you have a right to privacy even during working hours. In this context, employers are not allowed to forbid personal commodity hardware (personal computer, personal phone, ... Not talking about servers, generic mailbox, functional mailbox or anything not specifically assigned to you ) to be reasonably used for private matter. And consequently, they are not allowed to eavesdrop all your communications.
Sounds like the manager had way too much time on their hands.
Sounds like the employee had way too much time on their hands.
Looks like "upper-management" needs to focus on real worries, like getting more business or making the job more fulfilling. Clearly the employee was bored and wasn't one that was going to sit on their hands and do nothing while they still had a brain to use.
It appears this could have been handled very differently by all parties involved.
When office life turns into cops and robbers, no one is winning and it speaks to bigger issues.
Bullshit. If there was any fairness in industrial regulation it would be illegal for the business to demand such a thing. You certainly don't see that kind of nonsense in industries where there is low unemployment or workers have any kind of power. Workers are humans, not automations. It's simply not possible to avoid all personal use when you have been assigned a general purpose machine and you are forced to use all day. It's abusive.
And aside from the moral dimension, it is simply stupid. The only outcome that ever arises from restricting what your employees can do and monitoring them round the clock is *reduced* productivity, not to mention ending up with employees who feel they don't owe you shit if not actively sabotaging the operation. They teach you this in business school for fucks sake.
This company doesn't deserve employees.
Europe abolished slavery long time ago: no contract can override the laws. What you propose is totally illegal. You have a right to a reasonable privacy even at work. You have the right to call your wife on the work phone to say you will be late or to call to cancel a prostate testing, and doing that without your boss or anybody eavesdropping.
Only a terminally ill society allow this kind of shit.
The Germans are a bit more sensitive to surveillance by power (state or corporations). They have a few people still alive who remember what happens when it all turns to shit.
The law there is very specific. it is functionally equivalent to the US restrictions on government. sure they can monitor, but they need cause first. no blanket drag nets.
That is not entirely true.
Keeping human dignity intact at the workplace is great in Germany, but that doesn't mean that there are not ways to do it. In larger companies, where you have a workers council, getting their agreement is one way to do it. In all companies, having a suspicion and acting on it instead of doing some kind of Big Brother mass surveilance will most likely not get thrown out in court.
What we in Germany don't like is treating workers as hamsters in a lab and recording every little thing they do just because you can.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org