E-mail Privacy

[Carl M. Kadie]

braun at dri.com (Kral) writes:
[...]
>Here is what our Personnel department says, based upon various legal documents
>and privacy seminars she, er, they have attended:

>email and files in users directories are treated the same as employees desks.
>They may contain "private" stuff, or stuff necessary to company operations.
>Like desks, computer files are not the employee's property.  BUT, if the
>company (university, etc) gives the employees the impression that it is
>private, then goes and looks, an invasion of privacy suit could hold up.

>So I publish a memo once or twice a year that says this: files are not
>private.
>We have the right to look at them any time we think it is necessary to carry
>out our jobs; especially since we have certain obligations to the net.

Disk space should be given the same status as desk space. But, are you
giving disk space its due?

Many universities, as a matter of policy, say explicitly that faculty
and student office space is *private*.

- Carl

p.s. What obligations to the net require you to deny privacy to
faculty and students?

-- 
Carl Kadie -- kadie at cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign