Invasion of privacy laws vary from state to state, she explained, but they generally provide that an employer can't intentionally intrude on the private affairs of an employee if the intrusion would be "highly offensive to a reasonable person."įor this reason, employers should even be cautious about reviewing employees' personal e-mails that are sent through their work accounts. She noted that even if a monitoring activity is permitted under the SCA, an employer could still be liable under a state-law invasion of privacy analysis.
EMPPLYEES COMPUTERS AT WORK PASSWORD
In other words, an employer can review e-mails sent and received through its own server, but it can get into trouble if it accesses an employee's personal e-mail account through a password that's stored on a work-issued device, Grossenbacher explained. Under the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA), an employer can't-without authorization-intentionally access "a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided," unless the employer supplies the service. Monitoring electronic communications in the workplace involves both a statutory and a common-law analysis, Grossenbacher said.
17 at the National Employment Law Institute Employment Law Conference in Washington, D.C. Today's employers face expanding "e-workforce" issues as e-mailing, texting, blogging and social networking become routine activities in the workplace, according to Karla Grossenbacher, an attorney with Seyfarth Shaw.Įmployers have a variety of legitimate reasons to monitor employees' technology use, but they should be aware of the laws that place limits on their ability to access electronically stored communications, she said on Nov.
0 kommentar(er)
