Big Brother surveillance ‘goes too far at work’ says data report

Date: 20/06/02

By Peter Chapman

EU DATA privacy watchdogs are advising firms to give their staff separate email accounts for work and for personal use if they want to avoid turning into 'big brother'.

The message, in a report by member state data commissioners, comes as firms seek to avoid the sort of email debacles seen recently at Arthur Andersen and Merrill Lynch.

A single email between Andersen auditors was used to convict the company for its role in covering-up the plight of stricken energy giant Enron in the US.

Investment banking house Merrill Lynch was fined - and forced to eat humble pie - when analysts used email to rubbish stocks that the company had recommended to clients.

The report, seen by European Voice, envisages a system where personal emails - likely to be through a web-based account such as hotmail - would usually be examined by IT departments just for security reasons such as viruses and checked for abuse only 'in exceptional cases'.

Nevertheless, the data commissioners, headed by Italy's Stefano Rodota, warn companies against wholesale snooping - even of 'official' emails sent by workers and of websites they visit on company computers.

'Workers do not abandon their right to privacy and data protection every morning at the doors of the workplace,' the report states.

'They do have a legitimate expectation of a certain degree of privacy in the workplace as they develop a significant part of their relationships with other human beings in the workplace,' it adds.

Staff should, in general, be told about any spying equipment that is put in place to track their day-to-day activities 'unless important reasons justify the continuation of...secret surveillance, which is not normally the case'. Warnings that pop-up to identify unauthorised use of email or internet accounts are better than big brother surveillance, the commissioners add.

Data privacy lawyers say more firms than ever are setting up systems to check up email and internet usage by their workers.

Aside from incriminating emails, bosses worry about time lost spent surfing websites - sometimes containing pornography.

Data privacy experts said the report would clarify the scope for firms to snoop on their workers - a grey area in the law.

However, one law firm partner who advises multinationals on how to comply with the rules said companies would be better off calling the police as soon as they suspect someone is acting illegally.

'The trouble is, they all want to be Dick Tracy,' he said.

Commission President Romano Prodi has become the latest worker to face the prospect of opening-up his email basket to his employers - and the European citizen.

Under sweeping new access to public information rules, the public now has the right to demand to see details of his official correspondence, including emails.

Personnel policy spokesman Eric Mamer said officials in the Commission's secretariat-general would refuse to ask Prodi to disclose messages such as those to his family.

But he said citizens would even have the right to demand to see a work related email even if it was made on a secondary private account - provided they could offer sufficient proof of the relevance of the subject matter and the timing of the message.

Mamer admitted that the right to see such documents could encourage workers, including Prodi, to revert to the traditional telephone or face-to-face contacts for truly confidential matters.

'That is the thing about access to documents. As soon as you make more things available, people will start to do things informally over the phone,' he added.

A report by EU Member State data commissioners warns companies against wholesale surveillance of emails sent by workers and of websites they visit on company computers.