Work Security and Privacy

We all know that most of us do not spend most of our working day downloading pornography from the internet or emailing best friends and family in Outer Mongolia…But personal use and abuse of the equipment that your company provides is rapidly becoming a major issue in the UK, especially in light of the relatively few cases that have hit the headlines so far where multiple sackings have been forced in order to reiterate this point.

Although many of you are probably not aware, the Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations came into force last month. These regulations were viewed by many to be a 'carte blanche ' for companies and organisations to snoop on staff.

The regulations do allow businesses to intercept and monitor emails, telephone calls and use of the internet without getting the consent of the employee, but this has to be for certain 'legitimate' purposes. The legitimate purposes are laid out as follows:

• ·to detect crime and the unauthorised use of telecom systems

• ·to protect against viruses and other similar purposes

• ·to determine whether communications are relevant to the business

• for quality control purposes

The danger here is clear. The remit here seems to be rather wide and therefore most employers will be able to take it upon themselves to justify intercepting and monitoring the work behaviour of their employees under just one of the above.

You must also be aware that while your employer is not required by law to tell you that your calls and messages may be intercepted they are still required to make sure that 'all reasonable efforts' are made to let you know that such activity is going on.

Naturally we are following in the footsteps of the United States with taking the initiative over workplace related data-capture. Only very recently the American Management Association published its annual survey on workplace monitoring and surveillance.

The survey found that 78 per cent of large U.S. firms are recording and reviewing their employees' electronic communications. This surveillance includes the storage and review of telephone conversations, voice-mail and e-mail messages, and computer files. Employers are also reportedly monitoring internet connections and video taping employee performance.

However, the majority of the monitoring that took place was in the form of spot-checking employees rather than 24-hour surveillance, and of those who took part in the survey, 90 per cent said that they inform their employees that the monitoring is taking place.

Most concerning was the revelation that two thirds of the employers have disciplined employees for abuse of office e-mail or the internet, and more than one third have dismissed employees for such abuse.

Monitoring was also found to be most popular in the financial sector with 92 per cent of firms monitoring their employees, and least popular in public administration.