E-mail Privacy

[Steven S. Brack]

braun at dri.com (Kral) writes:

> In article <9tnh_wg at rpi.edu> rodney at sun.ipl.rpi.edu (Rodney Peck II) writes:
> >I think so -- since the sender didn't bother to make himself a CC, he's
> >really just out of luck.  If I fax something to you as my employee and
> >throw away the original, can I rummage through your office when you are
> >fired to get a copy of the fax?  no.  How is strolling through the 
> >backup tapes any different?
> 
> I really wish people would ask their Personnel and/or Legal departments befor
> posting stuff like this.  If you keep personal stuff in/on company property,
> then (*unless* you've been led to believe otherwise) it is *not* private.  Th
> has been held up on many occasions in court, and makes perfect sense, at leas
> to me.  I don't see how this can be construed as an invasion of privacy.
> That's what *personal* property is for (*your* personal property, now someone
> else's).

        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.  A company's right to keep copies of personal
material without the knowledge or consent of the employees is 
questionable, to say the least.

        We could also look at it as being a personal letter the
employee took with him when he left (assuming thee-mail was deleted by
the employee before his termination), & is now needed for "legal" reasons.
In that case, a search & seizure warrant would be required.

        The use of e-mail is so analogous to paper mail that it is often
easier to apply familliar standards that fit quite well, than to invent a
new standard.  While this does reduce the scope of the problem, the 
essential question remains: is using archives of employee mail, which the
employees probably never consented to, legal?  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.  If the document is
essential to the case, then it is part of the power of discovery to order
relevant documents produced, but the relevence & essential nature of the
document would have to be decided by an (impartial) judge.

        I'm not a lawyer, but I have read extensively on privacy law.



===========================================================================
Steven S. Brack     sbrack at bluemoon.uucp        The Ohio State University
sbrack%bluemoon at nstar.rn.com                        sbrack at isis.cs.du.edu
===========================================================================