E-mail Privacy

[Kral]

In article <8XJX32w164w at bluemoon.uucp> sbrack at bluemoon.uucp (Steven S. Brack) writes:
>        It might help to look at this as a paper memoin an employee's 
>desk.  Now, if the employee left it there, then it's fairly obvious that
>the company has claim on it.  But, in this case, it's a question of 
>retrieving the document from backup.  That would be more akin to the 
>company going through an employee's desk, without his knowledge, & 
>photocopying anything in it.

Here, and elsewhere, you state that the backups are made without the employee's
consent.  I disagree with this claim.  The company has me back up the files in
order to ensure the surviveability of those files in case something happens to
them.  They pay employees who work on this computer a salary (good, bad, or
otherwise) to do company work, not to do personal work.  Therefore, they view
all files on this computer as work related.  If an employee choses to put
personal stuff on here, and leave it on long enough for it to get backed up,
then they are either knowingly taking their chances, or are just plain stupid
(again, we make sure the employees know that their files are *not* private).

>Personally I think it's
>unethical for a sysadmin to use his tools to access users' personal e-mail
>without their permission, or a search warrant.

I think this is the crux of the debate: can something kept in a company desk or
on a company supplied computer be considered "personal" (to the employee)?
Particularly if it were obtained by using company resources (eg: electronic
mail paid for by the company).  Whereas a radio stored in a desk by an employee
clearly belongs to the employee (assuming he bought it), message obtained via
company resources are, IMNSHO, clearly the property of the company.

(This gets murkier when you consider files whose content was originated by the
employee in question -- see discussions on intellectual copyrights, etc).

[IMNSHO - in my not so humble opinion]


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kral * 408/647-6112 *               ...!uunet!drivax!braun * braun at dri.com
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