[OT] data privacy (was: Re: [ILUG] related Q...)

[Paul Jakma]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Gerard J Keating wrote:

> Yes, but you do NOT have the right to send/receive private emails
> or phone calls via your employeers communications equipement. Your
> employer _may_ grant us the usage of the equipment, but it is not
> a right.

actually.. no.

According to EU law, employees probably /do/ have a right. :)
indeed the uk dataprotection site is recc'ding that best practice in
light of recent EHCR developments that:

- employers should allow personal email
- employers should promote use of webmail for employees personal use.

>
> They must inform you that said phone/email is monitored,

no, they must get you to /agree/ to being monitored and make sure that
you are aware of it.

> and they
> can also claim ownership/copyright or any emails authored using
> their equipment.

no, they can't. not if it was a personal email or phone call.

> Privacy can only exist where the is an expectation of privacy,

exactly. And EU law and precedent mandates that we /do/ have a right
to privacy. Therefore we /may/ expect it.

i certainly expect it, and i'm backed up by EU law. If you do not
expect privacy fine.. but that's you.

> Unless the employer grants the employee the right to place data on
> the companies network, they all data on the network falls into two
> categories.
>
> 	1) The companies Data
> 	2) Unauthorised Data.
>

no.

honestly... go research it.

> They company has a right to police the network for unauthorised
> data. They _might_ not have the right to view such data, but they
> have the right to remove it without notice from the companies
> network.

remove? data here is all-encomposing -> email, irc, etc...

Anyway... don't believe me (good advice that, cause i tend to be wrong
a lot), go research it for yourself. The belief you have of data
protection and privacy seems to me very US centric, and i think you'll
be very surprised how different the EU reality is. The truth is that
EU law leans /heavily/ towards the right of the individual and their
privacy.

go look on the web, there's a mountain of information available
through google.

--paulj