At 11:57 AM 7/29/95, Philip Zimmermann wrote:
JUDGE RULES ON E-MAIL PRIVACY CASE
TULSA, OKLA -- The Oklahoma Supreme Court has ruled on a case that many legal experts believe clearly delineates the e-mail privacy rights of computer users in the workplace. Judge Stan Musing declared that employees have a right to expect that their empolyers will refrain from monitoring e-mail messages transmitted on company systems.
Far as I can tell, this is meaningless. If you sign a paper "consenting" to email monitoring by your employer, they've got a green light, period. And under those circumstances, I'd think very few companies would be foolish enough not to just ask you to sign. So the only ones who have to worry are those who don't get your "permission" first, and probably more and more companies will just be more up front about it in the future. The tightwad, privacy-loathing scumbags I work for sprang just such a document on us recently, and after squirming and bitching about it for a while, I actually did sign, simply because I wasn't prepared to lose my job at that point. My fear, based on well-established tradition, is that eventually this will become widespread and more and more employers will monitor email, with coerced "consent." --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl@panix.com http://wfmu.org/~davem