E-mail Privacy

[tony murray]

>In article <15110 at ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, conca at handel.cs.colostate.edu (michael vincen conca) writes:
>> 
>> Yesterday, this employee was terminated.  He/she was allowed to gather
>> their things and purge all of their personal files from the system.  Today,
>> my boss asked if it would be possible to retrieve this employee's E-mail
>> off of backup, find the memo, and print it out in case it was needed as 
>> evidence in a possible court case.
>> 

With all the arguments going back and forth about a company's rights
versus the employees right to privacy, it seems to have been forgotten
that the employee in the original example was _given_an_opportunity_
to purge all his/her personal files.  They were given a chance to get 
rid of materials they did not want to leave behind for others to see.
While I agree that a company official has the right to retrieve backed-up
files, I think they forfeited that right when they gave the employee the
opportunity to remove personal items.  I think that to go back and
dig something up that someone has thrown away (even though it's actually
coming from a backup file, the employee intended that it be removed, else
s/he wouldn't have deleted it) is a violation of implicit trust.  If
you are giving someone an opportunity to throw out old personal materials,
isn't it implied that you are not going to go rummaging through the trash
they put in the dumpster?

--Tony
  (tmurray at socrates.umd.edu)