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Monitoring employees’ internet & telephone use at work may contravene EU human rights laws, after a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights last week.
The case involved a public-sector employee, who won €3,000 in damages and €6,000 in court costs and expenses, after her communications were intercepted by her employer, Carmarthenshire College. Lynette Copland successfully took the UK government to court after her personal internet usage and telephone calls were monitored by one of her bosses in 1999.
This ruling means that the private use of company telecoms equipment and internet access may be protected under European human rights legislation, if the company has an acceptable personal-use policy and fails to inform the employee that their communications may be monitored. Employee communications are also covered by human rights legislation if the organisation has no explicit acceptable use policy and fails to inform the employee of the monitoring of personal email.
Privacy law firm, Pinsent Masons, said that although businesses now have clear guidance for monitoring work communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000, personal communications at work may be protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Human Rights Act 1998. “The lawful business practice regulations allow an employer to monitor and intercept business communications, so the court is implying that private use of a telecommunications system, assuming it is authorised via an acceptable-use policy, can be protected [by human rights legislation],” said Dr Chris Pounder, a privacy specialist. “The ruling is important in that it reinforces the need for a statutory basis for any interference with respect to private use of a telecommunications system by an employee,” Pounder added.
Source: ZDNet, 11 April 2007
Changes to UK Sexual Offences Act could mean negligent companies face listing on the registry.
The inclusion of email harassment in the revised UK Sexual Offences Act could open companies up to legal troubles, said an industry insider.
The UK Sexual Offences Act 2003 was recently updated to include “improper use of public communications.” Because of this, a person sending sexually harassing emails could be handed a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO) and therefore be included on the national sex offender registry.
“It really has tremendous implications for any organisation because the widening of the sexual offenders act could mean employers have vicarious liability,” said Ed Macnair, CEO of internet security firm Marshal. “The person sending is prosecutable, but also the organisation.” He cited one case where a London hospital was held liable in a harassment suit involving members of staff and another in the US where an employee’s wife sued her husband’s firm because they facilitated his child pornography habits.
“You don’t want your chief operating officer on the sexual offender registry because somebody in the company did something,” Macnair said.
Source: ITPro
MessageLabs on Thursday announced upgrades to its content and image control service offerings that feature greater accuracy and can scan more document types for allowable content.
MessageLabs’ Email Content Control 3.0 and Email Image Control 2.0 are offered as managed services that scan inbound and outbound e-mails for inappropriate, confidential or malicious content sent or received by an organization’s employees. The services help companies implement acceptable e-mail use policies and ensure compliance with a range of government and industry regulations, according to company officials.
The upgraded services now feature the ability to scan within Microsoft Office document attachments and include customizable notifications, so that e-mail administrators can change the text within a notification to better fit the organization, they say.
Email Content Control 3.0 also features a reorganized management interface that makes rule details easier to find, and can decompress files for scanning. The service can use the same security policies implemented by a company’s e-mail system, and rules can be set on a user-by-user basis, officials say. Email Image Control 2.0 includes new algorithms for analysing image attributes in order to accurately distinguish inappropriate content, officials say.
“Businesses are increasingly dependent on email as a primary communication tool,” said Michael D. Osterman, President, Osterman Research. “But it presents several risks for controlling confidential and valuable information from leaving the organization. Content filtering — inspecting the content of messages before they are sent — will assume a more important role within messaging management as a means of mitigating risks and managing corporate liability, and to make businesses feel more confident about their email systems.”
An increasing number of companies are monitoring employees’ e-mails for a good reason and with impressive results. It seems this invasion of workers’ personal space might reduce companies’ risks for financial scandal.
One of the results of this tightening-up is a closer watch over employees and the information they share in the course of doing business. Thus, one survey found that 93 percent of companies have formal electronic communication retention and review policies.
The same survey – conducted by Fortiva, a company that provides secure e-mail archiving – also found that of those companies with such policies, 63 percent said that e-mail surveillance has improved their ability to see exposure to risks as a result of employee communications. As a result, 26 percent of companies said they have fired employees as a result of information they discovered through e-mail surveillance.
Companies seem to be achieving the intended results. Employees appear to be more aware of the risks inherent in e-mail and subsequently are monitoring themselves. 83 percent of companies say they do not prohibit employees from sending or receiving personal e-mails on the companies’ systems. Yet, 79 percent of businesses believe e-mail monitoring is deterring employees from sending or receiving e-mails that violate corporate rules and policies.
Extract from Richmond.com
60% of companies monitor external (incoming and outgoing) e-mail as a way to protect against intruders, leaks, and offensive content. However, only 27% monitor internal messages (employee to employee messages), but that number is steadily growing as more and more companies are facing e-mail harassment suits.
Why Are Employees monitoring your email?
In its landmark 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are responsible for harassment — even if they are not aware that it is going on. Specifically, employers may be held liable if the employer “should have known of the conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.” (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)
The “should have known” standard is particularly troublesome when harassment involves email. How can a company know about every email message from its employees when thousands of messages are sent every day? Which messages should the company know about?
The liability for not knowing about email harassment can be substantial.
The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court said that penalties and fines could be lessened if the companies exercised “reasonable care” to prevent and correct harassment. (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)
Many harassment suits are now focused on whether companies exercised “reasonable care.” Many companies compound their risk by the mistakes they make when handling email. Fortunately, there are steps that you can take - click on link below to view report.
Source: 7 Mistakes You Can Avoid With Email Harassment Cases - Inboxer