In Australia, Bosses May Get Power To Snoop On Emails

Numerous readers noted the proposal by the Australian government for legislation to allow employers to snoop on employees' email and IM conversations. This is being proposed in the name of protecting the infrastructure from terrorism. The attorney-general cited the Estonian cyber-attacks as a reason why such employer monitoring is necessary in Australia — never mind that the attacks were perpetrated by a lone 20-year-old and not by a foreign government or terrorist. The law permitting intelligence agencies to snoop on citizens without permission expires this June, leading to the government's urgency to extend and expand it. The chairman of Electronic Frontiers Australia said, "These new powers will facilitate fishing expeditions into employees' emails and computer use rather than being used to protect critical infrastructure. I'm talking about corporate eavesdropping and witch-hunts... If an employer wanted to [sack] someone, they could use these powers."

really?

[ILuvRamen]

I had no idea it was illegal now! Here in the US it's like if you don't own the computer cuz it's a work computer and you're on the work's connection, they can spy on you all you want. It seems completely logical to me and not even really an invasion of privacy cuz you should be ohhhh you know, DOING WORK lol.

Re:really?

[QuantumG]

uz you should be ohhhh you know, DOING WORK lol.

Talking to your union rep is doing work.

Re:really?

[JustShootMe]

Then don't do it on company resources.

In that situation, you should consider anything the company owns as being enemy territory - and consider it the same as talking to your union rep while the boss is in the room. Find some other way. There are plenty. Maybe take your laptop to a starbucks and send an email there.

Re:Sound stupid to me....

[holophrastic]

Um, hi. My name is Bryan. I run a business in Canada. It's my business and I'm accountable for everything that it does -- as an officer of the corporation. And yeah, you'd better believe that I read my employees' e-mails. How on Earth would you expect me to be accountable for something that I don't know is occurring? There are plenty of ways to get an e-mail address. The one that I give to my employee is for business, it's a convenient tool.

And it's no different than the paper "inbox" on their desk -- which is, of course, also owned by me, both the box and the desk itself. And the fact that it's clean.

Re:really?

[QuantumG]

You have a right to talk to your union rep on company resources... in many companies the union rep is paid by the company.

Not everything in the world is the same as it is in the USA, kids.

Re:Sound stupid to me....

[JustShootMe]

Bah. You should not be sending personal emails through a business address for exactly this reason. It's not the fault of the business for snooping, but the fault of the employee for being stupid.

Re:Sound stupid to me....

[DustyShadow]

You should use https://www.gmail.com [gmail.com] for a secure connection

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're using your employer's resources, they have the right to monitor anything on their systems that they damn well please.

What the heck would you expect?

If you're worried about it, don't use company resources for personal access. Is this really so hard to understand?

Sheesh. This liberal feeling of entitlement has gone way too far.

In reality, many employers don't care what you do, as long as it isn't illegal or interfering with the quality of work. However, they do retain the right to intervene if they feel it's necessary.

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[Cassius Corodes]

Its not so much the new rules that anger me, for employers have previously just asked you to sign an agreement giving them that right, its that way they are introduced as to "fight terrorism". If I was osama I would be laughing my head of every time a new law is introduced to fight terrorism. We are just handing them moral victory after victory and they are just sitting in a cave somewhere.

Technology will overtake this

[countach]

Technology will overtake this. When everyone has an iPhone or like in their pocket, who is going to send potentially compromising emails through their employer?

Re:really?

[QuantumG]

Which is why employers shouldn't be permitted to read employee email.

Thanks for catching up with the rest of us.

PGP?

[homebrandcola]

Time to make sure my PGP certificate is still working ....

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[MrNaz]

As a small business owner in Australia, I would like to make it clear that I would never read my employees' emails even if I thought they were stealing from me. I consider privacy invasion to be wrong, and as the phrase goes, two wrongs don't make a right. Invading privacy to stop them stealing is as wrong as breaking into their house to steal back whatever they took.

It is not possible for employees, in the modern day and age, to sterilise themselves personally when they walk into the workplace. They still have friends they talk to, they still have families they think about, they still have pressing non-work issues they need to deal with. Expecting this to all disappear at 9am and reappear at 5:30pm is unreasonable, and as a business owner, I don't expect it of my staff, even though (assuming it's even possible which it isn't) it may increase productivity.

If I have an issue with a staff member stealing or doing something else that breaks the boundaries or law or morality, I don't want to deal with that issue by breaking the boundaries of law or morality. I can and will intervene to protect my business, but only if I don't violate their rights in the process. I have yet (in 8 years) to come across a scenario where I was not able to protect myself and still follow this principle. I don't believe I ever will. This experience affirms my belief that one does NOT have to trade freedom and/or morality for security and/or order.

Sheesh. This feeling of "anything goes" in the pursuit of security and law and order has gone way too far.

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[MrNaz]

It's not about fighting terrorism. It never was. It's about power pooling into the hands of the few.

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[Moridineas]

I was osama I would be laughing my head of every time a new law is introduced to fight terrorism. We are just handing them moral victory after victory and they are just sitting in a cave somewhere.

Please supply any evidence or even just reasoning that would explain why UBL cares one whit about civil liberties? Or how it could possibly be construed as a "moral victory"? Anything?

I don't get it--do you REALLY think UBL is cackling because bosses can read employee's emails now? I think the fact that that's how you are able to empathize with him and the al-Qaeda mindset is laughable, but in the end, very typical of many westerners.

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[Cassius Corodes]

Its not so much that he cares about civil liberties, champ (can I call you champ?) its that he is a terrorist, and his main job is screw with your head. When people are willing to be inconvenienced, champ, for the sake of protection from terrorism - he has succeeded for he has made an negative impact on your life. Now whether or not osama really knows or cares about this is largely irrelevant.

P.S. I'm not sure what sort of intellectual masturbation led you to assume I empathise with osama but rest assured that its wrong.

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[Moridineas]

Its not so much that he cares about civil liberties, champ (can I call you champ?)

You certaintly may, though I'm not sure why you would!! (out of curiosity--why would you?)

its that he is a terrorist, and his main job is screw with your head.

Ok, I completely disagree with this. His "main job" is not to "screw with" anybodies head--he has a series of discrete and explicit goals that he has repeatedly laid out. These include Western troops out of the Arabian peninsula. In fact this was one of his earliest causes and the one that made him target the US in particular.Troops out of Iraq is another one. Similar motivations took him to Afghanistan to fight the Russians out of an Islamic country. Etc. The key thing you should get out of this is that he isn't just playing at being a terrorist for the heck of it, and he doesn't get some perverse pleasure out of mindgames with Joe Sixpack American, he has goals.

When people are willing to be inconvenienced, champ, for the sake of protection from terrorism - he has succeeded for he has made an negative impact on your life.

The problem with this, is that your underlying premise is 100% false.

Additionally, if acts that protect from terrorism WORK (and I'm not going to assume that they do...but let's just say if) then guess what--he's been stopped from doing what he's been trying to do (that is, terrorist actions).

Now whether or not osama really knows or cares about this is largely irrelevant.

The first thing you've said I agree with--it IS totally irrelevant!

P.S. I'm not sure what sort of intellectual masturbation led you to assume I empathise with osama but rest assured that its wrong.

Apologies if you're not a native English speaker and have misunderstood what I meant--I didn't mean to imply anything like you seem to think I did. The OED definition of empathy is "The power of projecting one's personality into (and so fully comprehending) the object of contemplation" and to empathize is to do this. In simpler terms, it's putting yourself in someone else's shoes, or seeing the world from their eyes.

So, when I said "I think the fact that that's how you are able to empathize with him" what was meant was that when you try to understand UBL's actions from his point of view, you get something totally off base which doesn't fit with anything UBL/AQ/any other Islamist terrorist group has ever said. Or, in my opinion, you've failed to understand his actions at all.

I think the word you thought I said was "sympathize"

Already legal in the US...

[MadMorf]

...It's called, "I own the equipment and I'm paying for your time, so you have no expectation of privacy. Deal with it!"

Re:In Kiwi New Zealand

[it0]

Same goes for a private phone call.

Yet it seems to be normal. There are a lot of valid reasons to make a private call during work.

By your reasoning it's also ok for the employer to check the text message on your mobile phone.

In the end it's all about trust, if your employer doesn't trust you, either you did something wrong or your employer is paranoid.

Ok...so...

[interactive_civilian]

That's not a very good analogy... it doesn't take place at work. It doesn't take place during work hours. Finally, you aren't asking your employer to deliver the communication for you.

Take the same example as the GPP, but do it at work. You have finished your work, so you sit at your desk, take a sheet of paper from the notepad paid for by your work, write a letter to someone with the pen provided by your work, put it in the envelope provided by your work, maybe even go so far as to use one stamp that was also provided by your work, drop it in the company mail shute, and send it.

In that case, is it OK for your employer to open the letter and read it before it leaves the building?

Re:Confused

[Asic Eng]

It's really about the kind of country you want to live in - it's a choice. I don't want employers to have the rights to snoop on people who happen to work for them, because I want to live in a free society despite the fact that most of us will have to be employees of someone else. I also don't think that e.g. technically-oriented people are less valuable to society than entrepreneurial-oriented people, both are needed to build a successful economy. To me that means that one of these groups doesn't have the right to treat the other like slaves. And certainly just because someone gives me a phone and expects me to use it, doesn't mean they automatically get the right to snoop on me. Just as they wouldn't get that right by giving me a shovel. If you pay someone to work for you, you should have the right to get good quality work from that person. That's it. No right to look at the employees underwear, no right to sexually harass them, no right to rifle through their wallet, no right to decide what they eat, no right to restrict their private life.

I guess you'd probably agree that employers are not entitled to install cameras in employees restrooms, just as I think we are in agreement that an employer must have the right to monitor the quality of an employees work. The question is where to draw the line. One important aspect is economical necessity - if it's not possible to run a business under the restriction put in place, then those restrictions don't make sense. So that's my view of it: no intrusion beyond what's absolutely necessary. As for snooping on employees: many rich countries don't allow that, so clearly it doesn't fall into that category.

It's a rather absurd approach to management, anyway. If you waste all your time reading employees' emails, you'll lack that time for the work which counts. If you want to run a successful company make sure you have good employees and keep them motivated. Measure the quality of their work, not how they get there. That's not just my opinion, pretty much any management handbook will tell you the same.

Re:Eh.

[verzonnen]

Company owns the toilet/washroom as well, I doubt any employer would argue they have the right to check on those as well.

But give the people the option to access their private email from work and do monitor their work email. Then again I expect them to answer the occasional phonecall from work in their private time, so it all evens out.

If you need to fire an employee because they are not doing their job do so, don't use silly arguments like browsing porn/nazi/bible/stockmarket sites as an excuse.