Monitoring employees’ Internet and telephone use at work may contravene human rights laws in Europe, according to a ruling in a landmark case in the European Court of Human Rights last week. The case involved a public-sector employee who won $5,910 in damages and $11,820 in court costs and expenses after her communications were intercepted by her employer, Carmarthenshire College, based in South Wales. Lynette Copland successfully took the U.K. government to court after her personal Internet usage and telephone calls were monitored by one of her bosses in 1999. The ruling means that the private use of company telecommunications equipment and Internet access may be protected under European human rights legislation, if the company has an acceptable personal-use policy and fails to inform employees that their communications may be monitored.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Employee communications are also covered by human rights legislation if the organization has no explicit acceptable-use policy and fails to inform employees of the monitoring of personal e-mail.<\/p>\n
Privacy experts at law firm Pinsent Masons, based in London, said that although businesses now have clear guidance for monitoring work communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, personal communications at work may be protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Human Rights Act 1998.<\/p>\n
“The lawful business practice regulations allow an employer to monitor and intercept business communications, so the court is implying that private use of a telecommunications system, assuming it is authorized via an acceptable-use policy, can be protected (by human rights legislation),” said Chris Pounder, a privacy specialist. “The ruling is important in that it reinforces the need for a statutory basis for any interference with respect to private use of a telecommunications system by an employee,” Pounder added. The college had no policy in place at the time informing employees that their communications might be monitored.<\/p>\n
“According to the court’s case-law, telephone calls from business premises are prima facie covered by the notions of ‘private life’ and ‘correspondence’ for the purposes of Article 8,” said the court’s ruling.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/news.com.com\/E-mail+monitoring+may+violate+European+laws\/2100-7348_3-6175495.html?tag=nefd.top<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regulations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4171,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}