Weird Legal Reporting
CBS had this up in their technology section: Court Rules Against Work E-mail Snooping
(AP) A federal appeals court has made it more difficult for employers to snoop legally on e-mails and text messages their workers send from company accounts.
Under Wednesday’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, employers that contract an outside business to transmit text messages can’t read them unless the worker agrees.
Users of text-messaging services “have a reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding messages stored on the service provider’s network, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote in the three-judge panel’s unanimous opinion.
The ruling limits employers’ access to employee e-mail on internal servers.
I think everyone should understand the part about texting, i.e. it is an outside service and there is a presumption of privacy. The employer doesn’t own the equipment or establish the privacy rules, the outside company does.
What I don’t understand is the implication that this in any way changes the ownership of a company’s internal e-mail system. I don’t like it, but my assumption is that the company owns the equipment, allows access to employees for company reasons, and can require that it only be used for business, therefore, all e-mail belongs to the company.
Even without that, we all know that if the company has problems, all of its e-mail can show up in court and become part of the public record, so you are better off getting a private e-mail account somewhere else.
