Personal emails at work....

[myee8]

Originally posted by Phil Doyle
I didn't realise it led to paranoia.

Do you have any case examples that illustrate your claims here myee8?

Have a look at the newspaper articles on compensation claims by people. Watch them claim all these wierd and wonderful types of suffering they are having and the courts will most of the time side with them. I remember a lady whose son tried to break into a upstairs room, and when he fell off after being confronted by the owner, his mum, upon seeing her son in hospital, sued for stress caused from seeing her son in that state.

 

[Phil Doyle]

What the hell has that got to do with workplace privacy?

 

[mantis]

Phil, it's myee you are talking too, who knows how his brain works, or doesn't.

 

[myee8]

Originally posted by Phil Doyle
What the hell has that got to do with workplace privacy?

It has everything to do with it - employers say that they have the right to monitor things like email and Internet usage of their employees based on what i wrote in my first post about sexist/racist jokes in emails, viewing pr0n from websites or sent to you via emails. Like i said before, someone who sees and is offended by such material in a workplace wiht inadequate policies regarding email and Internet usage may rightly seek to prosecute their employer for promoting a hostile work environment. Perhaps it was the example in my second post about the mum seeing her kid in hospital that confused you.

 

[Phil Doyle]

Yes, your example did confuse me. But I'm easily confused.

Federal privacy Legislation would override any employer trying to have such an intrusive policy anyway. If someone is sent something they find offensive, the person they should take the complaint up with is the sender. If they are "invited" to see something on someone else's monitor, then the person who issues the invitation could be seen to be engaging in the harrasment. This is then an entirely a management issue - the employer is not liable for harrasment from another employee - unless they choose to do nothing about it. If they see something by looking at someone else's monitor without permission then they haven't got a leg to stand on.

A lot of businesses hide behind "legal reasons" as an excuse to introduce "surveillance creep" (not my term) into the workplace. It's crap, and everytiome its come to the Federal Court its been shown to be so. Anyone who gives "Legal" or "insurance" as reasoins why you can/can't do soemething should be asked to show you a written copy of their legal advice or insurance agreement. If they can't do that they're generally just crapping on.

As far as an employer having liability for "promoting a hoistile work environment" (never heard that one before!), then if the employer has a harrasment policy in place and that they stick to it then they're not liable. They've shown that they will deal with the problem.

 

[Port01]

Simple solution is:

If you dont want your email monitored, dont use it for personal stuff. If you dont care, or your employers dont care, go ahead.

I haven't ever found that just because an employer provides you with a service for work purposes, you can use it at whim for personal entertainment.

Common sense should prevail more often.

 

[myee8]

Originally posted by Phil Doyle
...As far as an employer having liability for "promoting a hoistile work environment" (never heard that one before!),...

Two views on policies governing Internet use at work: http://www.cio.com/archive/webbusiness/100197_gray.html

7th paragraph down for the hostile thing. In fact, read the whole article afterwards (and anyone else too for that matter), as it is a good article in relations to the topic of this thread. I used this in an essay i wrote last semester (80% too - i must be saying something right! ). Other good reousrces from that same essay i used and managed to find include:

Internet Censorship in Australia: http://www.efa.org.au/Issues/Censor/cens1.html

Legal Issues Involving Monitoring Employee's Internet and Email:
http://www.gigalaw.com/articles/2002-all/towns-2002-01-all.html

Follow These Rules About Office Email:
online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB102945258445266835,00.html

 

[myee8]

Hmm, that last one about rules to follow for office emails is a dodgy one. Luckily i transferred it to word, so i shall do a bit of copy and paste. Happy reading!

Voigt, Kevin, 16th August 2002, Follow These Rules About Office E-Mail [online], The Wall Street Journal Online, Available World Wide Web:
URL: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB102945258445266835,00.html


Follow These Rules About Office E-Mail
By KEVIN VOIGT

In South Korea this week, brokerage-firm employees were suspended after regulators searched e-mails for information leaks. In Hong Kong last week, a woman published a notice of apology in a newspaper for sending an e-mail that claimed Fancl House cosmetics stores were closing in Japan. And on Wall Street, regulators are coming down on securities firms for not turning over their electronic correspondences.

E-mail is having an impact on business practices in ways few could have predicted 10 years ago. "In some ways this is a case of technology biting back," says Dave Owens, a management researcher who specializes in e-mail issues at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. "It was supposed to free us up with more open communication, but now we could actually see it becoming more constrained."

E-mail lulls users into a false sense of intimacy -- we use it with the casual concern of a water-cooler conversation. But water-cooler conversations don't run the risk of later being dragged into a courtroom as evidence. "There's a certain innocence about free-form conversation and, because of that, we're unguarded," says Maurene Caplan Grey, senior researcher at Gartner Inc., a world-wide technology researcher and consulting firm. "Which was OK, that's the beauty of it. But now we've reached the point where we know that things can come back to haunt the organization."

The flurry of e-mail related court cases and investigations around the world will likely have ramifications for how we use e-mail at work, according to Mr. Owens and Ms. Caplan Grey. Here are four things to keep in mind before sending that next message.

E-mail Lasts Forever

You may dutifully delete e-mails at work that you think are too sensitive -- or legally damaging -- to keep. But as Oliver North found out in U.S. Congressional hearings for the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, erasing thousands of e-mails didn't cover his trail. The messages were backed up in a system. Even if you do erase notes as soon as they pop into your inbox, there is no guarantee they will be lost forever to the ether. There is a record of the message somewhere, incoming and outgoing e-mails are saved on company servers, and messages are also on the senders' or receivers' computers. "It's virtually impossible to audit everywhere the message could have gone," says Ms. Caplan Grey.

Lawyers Love E-mail

As the cases against Enron and Arthur Anderson show, e-mail is increasingly being brought into court. E-mail is a gold mine for attorneys because of the ease of sorting through the information, and the unguarded moments that can be useful in a court of law. "The whole area we're talking about is murky, but there's a tremendous amount of fear, anxiety and doubt by companies out there," says Ms. Caplan Grey.

E-mail is revealing questionable corporate practices. In South Korea this week, regulators issued warnings and penalties against brokerage firms Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg for breaking client confidentiality rules. In both cases, regulators trolled through employee e-mails for evidence of the early release of sensitive market information.

But e-mail is also being used as a legal weapon by companies against employees. In the U.S., cyber-rights advocates are closely following a case before the California Supreme Court this month over an ex-employee's e-mail campaign against his former employer, Intel Corp. The company is suing Ken Hamidi for sending e-mails to thousands of employees, containing allegations of age discrimination following his sacking in 1995, claiming the messages amount to trespassing on company property.

Once You Hit Send, You've Lost Control

E-mail takes on a life of its own after it is sent, as a young executive at the Carlyle Group in South Korea found out last year. After only three days into a new job in Seoul, the 24-year-old American sent a raunchy note to friends in the investment-banking industry bragging about all the sexual exploits the new city offered. Unfortunately for him the e-mail was forwarded to thousands in the industry and quickly criss-crossed the globe. Within two weeks of his arrival he was out of a job.

A Hong Kong woman has found herself in legal trouble this month following an e-mail she sent to friends claiming Fancl House shops in Japan were closed and its food supplements banned. The information was eventually posted on the Web site She.com. The writer, Lilian Ching, published an apology in a local Hong Kong newspaper, but Fancl House still plans to take legal action again her, company officials say. "Don't write anything in an e-mail you wouldn't want to see in the newspaper the next day," says Mr. Owens.

Know Your Limits

Globalization means that you may work in Singapore but your e-mails may fall under U.S. law. For example, financial institutions that do business in the U.S. must keep their information on file for up to six years, Ms. Caplan Grey says. Work related to patents, development of drugs or construction of a building must be kept for up to 25 years in the U.S.

Laws vary around the world. In China, new regulations in June strengthen laws forbidding Internet dissemination of information on issues such as Tibet and the spiritual group Falun Gong. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe is working on laws that will make hate speech or xenophobic Internet content a crime.

Not being mindful of broader legal issues and simply following company policy may set you up for legal problems. Accounting firm Arthur Anderson was convicted in June for obstruction of justice following a company e-mail advising edits to an internal memo on client Enron's financial disclosures. The company faces up to $500,000 in fines, five years' probation and being barred from auditing public companies. It is appealing the decision.

The basic rule is simple. "If you're worried about writing it in an e-mail, you shouldn't be doing it," Mr. Owens says.

Updated August 16, 2002

 

[Phil Doyle]

Interesting, but none of these apply to Australian jurisdictions.

We do not yet have the right to bear arms.

 

[Docker_Brat]

Originally posted by Phil Doyle
We do not yet have the right to bear arms.

Bugger. That'd stop the bosses reading your email

Seriously, the thing I was told years ago when first using email was: "If it's something you wouldn't put on the notice board for all to see, then don't say it in an email."

 

[Toffeeman]

If your not allowed to get e-mails at work then tell the people to stop sending them. I can understand a boss getting upset using company's resources for personal use, especially whilst you are getting paid to work. I hate the general thinking that the boss or company "owe" staff something, you get paid to work, if your not happy with the pay ask for more or leave.

In saying that I am a boss and have no problems with my staff receiving e-mails, however we have a very laid back work environment and I find I get the best response out of people this way.