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.

Comments

TL;DR version

[war4peace]

1. Company A used blanket monitoring software on its employees' machines;
2. Employee was caught by above-mentioned software working for another company while at work at company A;
3. Employee argues proof gathered was gathered illegally.
4. Court agrees with employee.

Outcome might have been differently if company A would only have monitored suspected employees instead of all of them.

Re:TL;DR version

[rtb61]

The claim was not about whether or not the worker was doing their assigned work but what they were also doing. So you do not punch you workers in the mouth when they chat with other non-productively if they are completing their work assignment. So in this instance they could have been firing their most productive worker, one who can finish his work load far faster than the other workers and thus had lots of spare time, which they then filled. So companies go nuts on idle time, must get profit out of worker 24/7/365, to the companies own detriment. Always watch for far more productive workers who seem to be doing not much, compared to unproductive workers who are always busy. The worker likely sued because they knew they were completely all required tasks and that they were far more productive than their fellow staffers, every right to be pissed off (although he would have been smarter to get away from salaried and move to contractor).

Special EU rules for other data as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

In this case the company installed software for the specific purpose of monitoring employees, but special rules also apply in the EU for routinely collected data that can be used to make inferences about peoples' work.

Some of the commercial applications I administrate for my company automatically log whenever a user starts or stops the application. Those logs can be used somewhat to track how people spend their time at work.

For US based employees we routinely publish usage summaries to help manage our software resources.

For EU based employees our legal department has advised be the usage data is confidential and cannot be shared with management without violating EU privacy laws.

Re:Welp

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be the manager of 84 people. I mostly knew what my people were doing. I even knew some were working on side jobs during their official working hours. They did not even hide this to me. We talked about. But these people were also the best one I got. They were the only one able to deliver, even off hours when it mattered.

  If do not create a trustworthy relationship, breaking news, people are very imaginative to hide from you. And like most thing, people gets addict to hiding, and soon you are a manager having not a clue what is going on in your team. Well done, now you are learning everything when it is too late: projects failures...

Re:if only we had an Federal Labour Court or union

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe is far from a paradise. But on this account you are right: employment and slavery are very distinct matters in EU.

my cisco story

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked for cisco a long time ago and have a friend who's been there almost from the very beginning. he moved to europe and stayed with cisco. he told me a story. it goes like this:

in the US, cisco installs spyware on EVERY pc laptop (along with fake certs that allow them a MitM access to their pseudo encrypted network i/o). in the US, cisco does not tell their employees this, exactly; they just say 'they have the right to monitor employees' but they don't say anything more than that and most cisco employees (the younger ones, at least) are kept ignorant. I saw them reading personal email on work systems, etc etc. really stupid!

in europe, cisco is FORCED to tell employees much more detail about their spying and keylogging. it was via this route (lol) that I found how what cisco is really up to. the guys in holland, germany (etc) know they are being monitored (to the extent that its legal) but in the US, employees are kept in the dark.

note, this is not about cisco; its probably EVERY large corp in the US. the point is: the US is too business-friendly and consumer/employee hostile. overseas, its much more balanced. they have more rights over there, in general, and companies don't OWN their fucking asses like they do here.

folks, be careful if you work for a large corp in the US. you have been spied on, data logged and MitM'd. and likely, you had no idea, either, since no one told you (for certain).