> This is a gray area in American Law. It's legal as soon as you have > informed all of your employees of what you're doing. Also,
Not true, see below. > make certain > that you have them sign something to the affect that they are aware of > it. I had a case similar to that where the company I was working for > got sued because the employee said that they where not aware of us > monitoring email. people get sued for all sorts of reasons, does not make it the law. Under federal law the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) allows companies to monitor employees' email when one of three provisions are met: one of the parties has given consent, there is a legitimate business reason or the company needs to protect itself. Even though the ECPA requires a provision to be met, under federal law companies are generally allowed to monitor employees' email. Is there any company that does not need to protect itself from the legal minefield that is business these days? In 2000 there was a bill introduced to force employers to notify employees of monitoring, it died in committee. Under some state laws, sure to be challenged it is illegal to monitor email without notification. Many legal scholars question whether these laws will stand as employers are responsible for what their employees do at work, including emails sent; they therefore have the responsibility to monitor email. Everyone knows that what they say and do at work is monitored, so they should also know that their email is just an extension of same. Unfortunately in our 'get rich quick' over lawyered country there are actually people suing because they feel they had a reasonable expectation to privacy. The safest way to handle this is to put it in the written handbook that every employee gets. Spell it out in no uncertain terms. The original writer did not make it clear if this was a company mandated idea. I was under the impression that it was his (the email writer's), not the companies. That would be totally different, possibly illegal.
