There is nothing to prevent you from stating that you will allow "personal"
use for employees, but make it clear that while a limited amount of personal
use is tollerated, under no circumstances will you allow "private" use. In
other words, so long as you offer employees no expectation of privacy, then
you can monitor what you wish. Emloyees will then be assured that they can
use the email system to send personal emails, but that these will be
monitored and presumably your usual decency/pornography/racist etc email
standards will be applied to these communications too.
Regards to all.
Martin Hoskins
-----Original Message-----
From: Tommy Kennedy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 20 February 2002 14:35
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: email monitoring
Hi all
- a rather long winded question on email monitoring.
We are looking to strengthen our email monitoring.
So I've been reviewing our email policy (again) to reflect this.
And working with our legal team to make sure anything we do meets DP, RIPA,
HRA, etc.....
One sticky problem keeps coming up.
Personal use.
We currently allow reasonable personal use.
But the more I look at this the more difficult it becomes to justify.
My understanding:
We can monitor business email in terms of the Telecommunications (Lawful
Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000.
But to monitor personal email we need to fall back on RIPA section 3.
i.e. both parties have consented.
So the options would be:
1. Ban personal use and monitor everything
2. Allow personal use and monitor only business use
3. Allow personal use, gain employee consent, and monitor everything
The second two options are possible but would present their own difficulties
and risks.
e.g. 2 leaves us open to abuse of personal email facilities.
and 3 doesn't address the issue of 3rd parties in personal email.
So option 1 is the easiest and safest.
I suppose the reason for this email is that this seems to me to be rather
unenlightened.
So before recommending it, I wondered what others were doing ?
Perhaps I have missed something ?
Or maybe most are already banning personal use ?
Or are happy to allow personal use unmonitored ?
Any offers gratefully received.
thanks
Tommy Kennedy
South Ayrshire Council
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