Monday, February 5, 2007

PRIVACY - “I no think that word mean what you think it mean.”


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According to a 2005 survey by the American Management Association, three out of four employers monitor the Internet usage of employees, and just over half of U.S. companies review and retain employee email messages.

Not only are employers allowed to monitor what employees do on workplace computers, they are obligated to retain and archive electronic business records. In workplace lawsuits, email creates the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence.

Many do not notify workers about the monitoring, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC). In fact, there are very few laws regulating employee monitoring, and the PRC advises all employees to assume that their workplace activities and communications are being monitored.
Nancy Flynn, the executive director of the ePolicy Institute in Columbus, Ohio, agrees that employees should expect to be monitored, adding they should "comply 100 percent with the employer's computer usage and content policies."

Hmmm, what part of “company property” is so hard to understand?

If you send an email from a company computer there is an electronic record of that, so it’s baa strategy to post an online resume, for instance, from a company computer, and if you search kiddie porn sites from a work computer, the company you work for has a right to protect itself from your criminal actions by handing you over to law enforcement.

This ISN’T a “privacy” matter!

You have no reasonable expectation of privacy when on someone else’s computer!
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How can that be at all hard to understand?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it weren't for the emails produced during the discovery process of a white-collar lawsuit I once worked on, it would have been much harder to prove the other side's wrongdoing.

Among his improprieties, an executive had had an affair with his company's consultant. So our lawyers made him read his own flirty/chatty/goo-goo emails into his deposition. When we needed a laugh, we watched the video of his testimony....

JMK said...

How dumb can some people be?

A company computer is private property...and not our own private property!

It's like doing something illicit on a public computer where anyone can track it.

Cell phone calls can be tracked via scanners and recorded, just ask Newt Gingrich.

It's OK to for folks to lament "lost privacy," but people with common sense should also exercise some caution when on their cells and on public or corporate computers. I bet that executive you mentioned learned that lesson, the hard way.

People never cease to amaze.

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