Last week, the Wisconsion Supreme Court ruled that a teacher's school e-mail may be private. Specifically,the Court said
"that the content of government workers' personal e-mail messages are not part of government business and are therefore not always subject to the state open records law."
The issue for many is what are the expectations of someone who sends personal messages on public machines? Will a uniform acceptable use policy suffice? Some think the rule of thought is that an employer should provide reasonable work conditions which allows for some level of flexibility.
My suggestion is not to use the public/work computer for private use unless you are prepared to share that information with others.
I suppose that emails can be viewed as telephone calls. Would an employer have the right to listen in to its employees telephone calls? Well some actually do with the excuse of quality control. However this is done with a recorded message that asks if both parties want to participate in the "quality control measure". What about when an employee uses the phone on their break to make a doctor's appointment? Shouldn't there be a measure of privacy for the employee in this situation? Or should the use of the phone be banned all together for all employees?
ReplyDeleteMarta Laura