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This Just In…
More companies reading employee e-mails, even as some courts say they have no right
November 20, 2009
More corporations are secretly reading their employees’ e-mail messages. As The Wall Street Journal reports, in a June survey of 220 large U.S. firms, 38 percent said they employ staff to read or otherwise analyze the content of outgoing e-mail, up from 29 percent last year. But amid growing national concern about privacy issues in the Internet age, courts in some instances have begun showing more consideration for employees who feel their employer has violated their privacy electronically.
In past years, courts were sympathetic to corporations that monitored employees’ personal e-mail accounts accessed over corporate computer networks. But now courts are increasingly considering whether employers have explicitly told employees how their e-mail is monitored, the Journal reports. In one such case last year, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that employers contracting with an outside company to transmit employee text messages can’t read those messages without the employee’s consent.
Lawyers for corporations argue that employers should own keystrokes that occur on work property. Employers reportedly fear productivity losses when workers spend too much time writing personal e-mail messages, and say that sending company documents over personal accounts invites viruses and security leaks.
In some cases courts are finding that employers have no legal right to monitor email, including personal notes sent on work accounts, unless they explicitly tell employees they will do so. — Greg Beaubien
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