Bosses get key to staff e-mail boxes

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Saucy banter and holiday planning may be better conducted offline -- at least during office hours -- with new regulations in Britain allowing businesses into their employees' cyberspace.

In practise it has been done before -- telephone company Orange sacked around 40 workers in England in August for downloading pornography and a Cheshire worker was last year fired after searching on-line for holidays -- but the UK Government has entered the world of cyber-regulation with a tough stance.

VIDEO CNNfn's Sonya Sequeiras reports on challenges companies face in balancing employee Internet use against the need to prevent disclosure of damaging information. Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

In fact the director of civil liberties watchdog Privacy International, Simon Davies, brands the new Department of Trade and Industry rules which came into force on Tuesday the most draconian in Europe.

The regulations allow access to staff calls, e-mails and Internet activity without the employee's knowledge for a wide variety of reasons.

"Routine access to business communications" includes monitoring standards of service and training, combating crime and unauthorised use of company systems.

Welcomed as a "legitimate business need" by industry, it is the lack of consent and the vagueness of "unauthorised usage" that have civil liberties groups and unions up in arms.

They argue the rules conflict with a recent Data Protection Commission code on surveillance, which emphasises consent, and the guarantee in the new Human Rights Act that everyone has the right to privacy for correspondence.

Other countries such as Germany and Austria, says Davies, depend far more on a workplace consensus, with Scandinavian countries in particular demanding consent before undertaking electronic surveillance.

This is borne out by telecommunications' company Siemens in Germany.

It has a code, which specifies fax, Internet and telephone usage must be work-related, but press officer Sabine Metzner in Munich says no surveillance would be undertaken without the involvement of the "Betriebsrat" (office place work council).

"Trust is emphasised," says Metzner.

In Switzerland, where there are strict privacy laws, food giant Nestle takes a relaxed approach with no controls over Internet usage.

"We trust people rather than control them," says spokesperson Hans Jorg Renk -- and no case has been brought to his attention where this has been abused.

Renk adds that it is difficult to draw the line between business and personal Internet use. "People are increasing their knowledge even doing things outside work."

Back in Britain, Yaman Akdeniz director of Cyber Rights and Cyber Liberties UK condemns what he says is a lack of accountability in the new regulations for those doing the monitoring.

But until a test case goes before a court the scope of the rules is unclear says Akdeniz.

"Where do you draw the line? If someone is doing work efficiently surely it doesn't really matter if they send 10 or 50 messages during that time?"

It is the covert access to employees' inboxes that concerns the Trades Union Congress (TUC) says head of communication Nigel Stanley.

"Of course if a salesperson is off sick the company should be allowed to check for new orders but they shouldn't be allowed to trawl for no good reason," Stanley argues.

He says the TUC welcomes companies setting out clearly what can and cannot be done on company time and company equipment -- but with long work hours a commonsense approach in allowing people to communicate and make transactions over the net is needed.

This is the attitude taken by Volvo Car Corporation in Sweden which has a formal code specifying that e-mail and Internet access for private usage must be limited so it "doesn't interfere with work" and e-mails should use a private mailbox.

Doing one's banking at work or checking out travel sites during a lunch break would be acceptable says spokesman Ola Norberg.

But Nigel Hickson, head of e-business at the Confederation of British Industry, welcomes the new rules saying it is not a "snooper's charter" as employees must be notified in general terms that they may be monitored.

"We think they sensibly allow businesses to intercept communications in the workplace where there is a legitimate business need to do so."

Ruth Lea, head of the policy unit at the Institute of Directors, also "broadly" welcomes the right to monitor employees, but is alarmed by possible legal challenges because of the apparently contradictory sections in the Data Protection Commission's code and the Human Rights Act.

Feds may be reading your mail
April 26, 2000
U.K. snoop law may conflict with EU Human Rights Act
October 5, 2000
More employers taking advantage of new cyber-surveillance software
July 10, 2000
Internet group opposes new U.K. wiretapping law
August 4, 2000

Institute of Directors
Confederation of British Industry
Privacy International
Data Protection Commission
Department of Trade and Industry
Trades Union Congress
Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK)

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