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On 2006-06-06, Rex Ballard spake thusly:
>
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> Study: Companies snooping on employee e-mail
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | According to a new study, about a third of big companies in the United
>> | States and Britain hire employees to read and analyze outbound e-mail as
>> | they seek to guard against legal, financial or regulatory risk.
>> `----
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/06/05/email.snooping.reut/index.html?section=cnn_tech
>
> This is a regulatory requirement in brokerage firms, where brokers
> are expected to monitor traffic that might include disclosure of
> insider information. These same 'watchers' are often sold to other
> industries. Lotus Notes is deliberately designed to provide auditing
> of the e-mail so that illegal disclosures and insider trading can be
> monitored and prosecuted if necessary.
>
> Many companies also keep logs of web sites visited, and intercept POP
> and NNTP traffic in the routers.
>
> Ironically, use of indecipherable encryption is also a termination
> offense in some of these environments.
>
> Keep in mind that there are also restrictions and regulations on what
> can and cannot be done with the information gathered. For example,
> personal e-mail that is not illegal (copyright violations, insider
> trading, passing information to facilitate criminal acts, solicitation
> of minors...) may not be used for such things as termination of
> employees, denial of promotions, or to commit illegal acts such as
> blackmail or extortion.
>
> Even when criminal acts are committed via e-mail, there needs to be
> sufficient probable cause for a search warrant or a court ordered
> disclosure order before the e-mails can be used as evidence in a court
> of law.
I had a heck of a time googling anything useful on the subject. I wanted
the case information for a specific email ruling, but couldn't find it.
anyway:
I believe you are mistaken. I remember reading a decision by the supreme
court that there is no expectation of privacy in Email communications
and in particular, all internal email flowing through, and flowing
from a corporate intranet is the property of the corporation. As such,
they may view any email at any time without the knowledge of the
employee, and they may restrict any or all, or any type of incoming
and outgoing email.
In additon, corporations may set their own internal
policies for email use. The employee must be notified of the policy(s)
on hiring, or on change in implementation, and may be required to agree
to the terms as part of his/her employment. Employees who refuse to agree
to the policy may be terminated, reassigned even if it is a lower
paying, or lower priority position, or transferred to another
department that dosen't use computer access at all. This is at the
discretion of the employer.
Journalists are protected from this as a result of a ruling
affirming a law that protects them from being forced to reveal
sources.
As for the privacy of email on the internet, it is not protected
by the wiretap act and is open communication. Essentially, it has
the status of a conversation at starbucks that is overheard at the
next table.
(quote)
"[it is] doubt[ful] that the political climate will lead members of
Congress to act. In light of terrorism threats, the issue will
likely become one of security versus privacy, which could be a
hard sell for privacy advocates, he said......."
...."E-mail is just inherently insecure, and we have a whole bunch of
problems because of it," Arrison said. "There are two things to take
from this ruling: Know that your e-mail is not private and it never
has been, and figure out what to do about it."
(end quote)
(editorial comment by me: PGP is a good way to do somthing about it)
The exception, as you noted, is law enforcement, but not so
limiting as you might expect.
(quote)
"When it comes to government access to e-mail, law enforcement officials
still would need a warrant to access e-mail, Winick said. But with
wire communications, such as phone calls, the Wiretap Act restricts
the types of conversations that could be tapped. Given the appeals
court's ruling, similar limitations likely won't apply to stored e-mail
messages once law enforcement officials gain access, he said."
(end quote)
http://tinyurl.com/jjtj8
This one could be a bit unnerving if you weren't internet savvy.
Your ISP can read you're email for any reason they want, or no
particular reason at all. Without you're knowledge. Legally.
Just as a sidenote, in my workplace (a large multifacility medical
center), more than one employee has been terminated for innapropriate
use of the intranet email system. Some for as simple as reading webmail,
some for ebay activity, some for porn. The strange thing about that is
that I once recieved a picture in my corporate email account of a
(rather teen looking) girl in her birthday suit, posing in a position
that required a certain degree of flexibility. It wasn't (specifically)
addressed to me, and I didn't (at home, or at work) visit naughty
sites, so when I opened my mail and it showed up on the screen
(the computer was in the nurses station, and all but one of them,
was female) It was a bit of a shock. A doctor was behind me waiting
to use the computer, and smiled but didn't say anything. A couple
of the nurses saw it and laughed at me. That was fun. :-( Some
were not amused. I deleted it as fast as my fingers would fly. It
seemed to take forever. Just an anecdote to but one reason most
businesses have email policies.
> Even then, there are some pretty strict guidelines on how the
> e-mail archives can be used. The orders cover specific subjects and
> often specific recipients and senders. Only those e-mails can be used
> in court, and often the requested e-mail is very strictly filtered.
> Criminal investigators have to be extra careful to prevent the
> accidental discovery of unrelated criminal activities because the
> unwarranted disclosures would be "poison fruit".
Regards,
Mathew
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