[BUGS] Assumed Privacy of E-Mails?

[Edwin Groothuis]

On Wed, Apr 09, 2008 at 01:39:42PM +1000, Jerahmy Pocott wrote:
> Not a technical question here, not really bsd specific, but since many  
> people here admin mail servers and such..
> 
> The question is about the privacy expectations of assumptions of your  
> e-mail, okay so we all know that anything you send in the clear over  
> the internet is pretty much not private, but we also pretty much  
> expect that only the recipients are going to read our mail, right?
> 
> Now what about a company account? Do you expect mails sent or received  
> via a company address to be private? Some companies I'v worked for  
> have had clauses in their employee agreements like "while your company  
> address is private, your mail may be viewed by system administrators  
> inadvertently and will be surrendered if by court order" etc etc.. But  
> others have had nothing.
> 
> Obviously I'm not a lawyer and don't really know the legal ins and  
> outs of it, but if you haven't got them to sign an agreement and you  
> went and read their mail or made it available to others or even just  
> printed a list of the addresses they had sent or received mail to/from  
> that would be some sort of violation of privacy?

There is a difference between "me reading your email for fun and
profit" and "me reading your email because something is wrong with
the mail system which I'm administring and I'm trying to figure out
what is happening.". The first one is a privacy violation, the
second one is normal operations.

If you want an analogy with the non-IT world: "the postman reading
your read postcards and discussing the places where you have been
with friends" and "the postman looking over the card to figure out
where the address is written down".


Signing or not signing an agreement about it will not help you much:
If a court-order comes in to handover information then you have to
comply within the law. If I accidently read something in your email
while investigating the problem which is related to a criminal
action, I have to act on it otherwise I will be liable as well. Of
course the first thing is get rid of the responsibility by shoving
it to my boss and let him deal with it. But it won't be the thing
I will be looking for.


The company you work for owns the equipment you work with and is
responsible for it. It is responsible for the things you do during
your work and for the communications you have during your work.


Do what your parents taught you: keep business and pleasure, or
work and private life, seperated.


At least my 2 cents, Edwin

-- 
Edwin Groothuis      |            Personal website: http://www.mavetju.org
edwin at mavetju.org    |              Weblog: http://www.mavetju.org/weblog/