Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ucbvax!hoptoad!gnu
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Reading employees' mail
Message-ID: <12853@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 15 Oct 90 19:14:34 GMT
References: <4761@bone25.UUCP> <69148@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <1990Oct4.031131.2296@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
Organization: Cygnus Support, Palo Alto
Lines: 26

brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> What's wrong with recording what goes on under your own roof?

gl8f@astsun7.astro.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl) wrote:
> I believe Epson America is going to find out in court, real soon now.
> They had a manager who read all of his employee's email, including
> mail with rude comments about the manager that the employees thought
> was confidential.

Sun Microsystems has a policy against anyone reading anyone else's
email.  It is a firing offense.  Many years ago, I was involved in such
a situation there, in which some employee read the saved mail of a high
level manager.  Some managers were 'setting up' employees to be fired.
The emp who read his mail notified the employees being set up (of which
I was one).  You wouldn't believe the stink that this raised!

So, to protect EVERYONE's privacy and make it possible to conduct all
kinds of discussions, private as well as public, by email, they
instituted this policy.  If email is not secure, by technology or by
strictly enforced edict, you can't handle personnel matters by email.
"Recording what goes on under your own roof" sometimes reveals matters
that the participants would not have done electronically had they
known that monitoring was allowed.
-- 
John Gilmore      {sun,pacbell,uunet,pyramid}!hoptoad!gnu        gnu@toad.com
Just say no to thugs.  The ones who lock up innocent drug users come to mind.