E-mail Privacy

[David Hoopes]

In article <15110 at ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> conca at handel.cs.colostate.edu (michael vincen conca) writes:
>
>Yesterday, this employee was terminated.  He/she was allowed to gather
>their things and purge all of their personal files from the system.  Today,
>my boss asked if it would be possible to retrieve this employee's E-mail
>off of backup, find the memo, and print it out in case it was needed as 
>evidence in a possible court case.
>
>Now for the tough questions.
>	Is this legal?  Is this ethical?  If this person still worked
>here, I would immediately refuse.  But since they don't, do they still
>have any rights to their E-mail?  Right now, I am leaning towards refusing
>because I think a person's E-mail is theirs, regardless of their status
>with the organization.  Anyone have any other opinions on this?
>
>								-Mike
>

Assuming that the system is one that is provided by the employeer (not a
"Public" facility.  Then IMHO it is legal.  The employeer owns the contents
of that system including mail.  

Is it ethical, yes.  I tell all of the users on my systems that I can and will
read anything that gets put on the system.  My main reason for doing this is
to ensure that they know that mail is not secure.  If I where you I would
point out to your boss that e-mail should not be used used for that kind
of memo.  I have never gone snooping in users mail ( I have work to do) but
I would not hesitate to do so if I had any reason to.

If I was your boss and I ask you to get something out of somesones mail
box for a good reason like the one stated and you refused to do it, you
would be the next guy out the door.  And it wouldn't matter it the person
still worked for the company or not.

On the other hand if the boss did not have a good reason for snooping then
I would resist.  If he/she insisted I would do it but I would make sure that
the person that was being snooped found out about it.

Again this only applys to systems that are owned and operated by the 
company for employees to do company work on.  Public systems are a whole
differant ball game.


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David Hoopes                              Tallgrass Technologies Inc. 
uunet!talgras!david                       11100 W 82nd St.          
Voice: (913) 492-6002 x323                Lenexa, Ks  66214