Re: Proposal to revise ISOC's mission statement

[Christian Huitema <huitema@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/7/2017 11:06 AM, Lee Howard wrote:
 (Responding to James Woodyatt)

Those are dissimilar with respect to the issue of consent. It’s one thing to use surveillance technologies in the role of legal guardian for dependents without capacity for consent, and it’s an entirely different thing to use a contract of adhesion to coerce subordinates into “consenting” to give up their rights to intimate privacy.

You have no right to “intimate privacy” at work on your company-owned computer on the company network on company time.

Lee, you are making here a legal statement, "you have no right". As a matter of fact, that statement depends on which laws apply in the place of business. I understand that most US courts will consider that employers have a right to monitor employees' communications, although there are gray areas when employers allow private use of corporate email. But then, German courts will take the opposite view.

The opinion of the European Court of Human Rights, as reported here by the NYT(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/business/european-court-employers-workers-email.html), is rather nuanced. The very high level summary of that opinion is that expectations should be set clearly, so that employees understand what is monitored and what is not. The opinion also states that enterprises should be reasonable, and limit their monitoring to work relevant issues.

Bottom line, the situation is much more nuanced than "you have no right". Although of course I always advise my friends to not conduct private conversations using corporate email, and use their own personal account instead.

-- Christian Huitema