This is the most frightening thing I have heard in a long time, Kakki. Can one be legally executed for having such emails, or merely fired? Is gay content considered grounds for dismissal?
David Kakki said: This issue has come up before a few times. Here is what I haven't seen addressed this go around (but it has been addressed in the past here) - a number of people who subscribed to the list do so through their work email. I don't know about other countries, but it is fairly standard practice in the U.S. for employers to monitor employee email accounts. You can debate whether that is fair or not until the cows come home - I don't like it, but on the other hand, company email legally is considered official company property and correspondence and can be subpoened in lawsuits. I don't know about the latest email filtering devices, but in the past, when a subpoena is issued for email, the company usually has to hand over the entire back-up tape, or else go through weeks of labor and great expense to print out and sort through 1000s of emails to find the responsive ones. Companies regularly employ certain software to screen through the email to find sexual or other content. This happened at my old law firm. They did a surprise run through and captured all email that had certain keywords in it. I don't subscribe from work but someone had sent me an email there titled "Joni Photos" of some concert pics and that one was captured! Think if your company has been hit with a sexual harassment suit (which according to all the sensitivity training mandatory at many companies) can include ANYTHING in the workplace that mentions sex. They subpoena the emails and find a load of incoming that has sexual content. No matter what the context or circumstance, a sharp plaintiff lawyer may use those emails as proof that the company is not being vigilant about keeping it out of the work place. Maybe there are others on the list who work for government agencies, or the FBI or the White House - ya never know. Many of the political posts, if screened, (which in government and government contractor firms they surely are) could put those listmembers in an awkward position. So, you can say, well, don't subscribe from work or maybe those people will say it's best to subscribe to JC-only to avoid any potentially problematic email in the work account inbox. I'm just trying to show another valid reason why some people have a problem with certain content. It's not neccesarily because they don't like the content or just like to gripe.
