[ILUG] related Q on bash / nt / win2000

[Paul Jakma]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, Gerard J Keating wrote:

> People rant on about the right to privacy in work, there is no
> such right. You have privacy in your own home, but not in public.

rant? sorry, but i'm not ranting..

i'm trying to shake people out of the very mistaken view that
employers may rifle through their emails at will with impunity.

As admins we must be very sensitive to privacy when dealing with data
on or transient through our systems, and as people we must *expect*
our privacy to respected. You *do* have the right to privacy at work!

Anyway, never mind me ranting on about it, see for yourself:

See EU Directive 94/95/EC relating to persons and data processing
which should be implemented across all EU member states by now:

http://www.privacy.org/pi/intl_orgs/ec/final_EU_Data_Protection.html

articles 6,7 and 8 are the interesting ones.

Also, see Directive 97/66/EC which clarifies data processing in
telecoms:

http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/lif/dat/1997/en_397L0066.html

However.... the big one is Article 8 of the European Convention on
Human Rights: "right to privacy":

"Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life,
his home and his correspondence."

this is quite vague but there has been an ECourtHR ruling that
interprets this to mean that employers must respect the privacy of
employees and thus may not monitor email routinely.  (can't find the
damm reference though.)

the european stance on privacy has caused trouble for some, esp. for
the UK (which leaned towards the US model of data protection) and for
the US as the EU laws mean that companies in the EU must go to lengths
to ensure that any data that goes outside the EU must still be subject
to the same protection as within the EU. apparently EU and US have
reached some agreement on this issue (search for safeharbor).

anyway, just go to google and just search for EU privacy.. some of the
more interesting ones:

http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,16637,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/10/05/uk.snoop.v.eu.idg/
http://www.wired.com/news/lycos/0,1306,15779,00.html

etc... etc... etc... etc...

dataprotection.gov.uk is also very interesting as the UK has had to
make significant changes to common practice because of the EU
directives and the recent interpretation of article 8 wrt work emails
by the ECHR.

you may *not* *never* snoop/intercept/redirect data just because you
can - you must have very specific and good reasons or the *explicit*
permission of the "data subject". If you are the victim of
snooping/etc you have course for redress via the Data Protection laws
in your country which should be in force according to EU *law*.
Failling that you can go to the ECourtHR.

The employer might own the hardware and lines but they do not
neccessarily own the data.

--paulj.

obPossibleEUPrivacyViolater: Compaq Computer (Irl) Ltd.

padraig brady, did you ever sign anything that said you agreed to
having your email monitored?