The real Big Brother November
2000
New rules allow businesses to snoop on employees'
email - but will they survive the Human Rights Act?
Tuesday 24 October saw the introduction of the Lawful Business Practice regulations. These regulations, which were laid before
Parliament on October 3, enable employers to monitor employees'
email and web surfing once that employee has been informed and were
were made as part of the controversial Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act (click here
for further information on the RIP Act).
Concerns have been raised that the regulations
as they stand could conflict to Data Protection guidelines protecting
employees' privacy, though the government is keen to point out that
they are 'compliant with the Telecoms data Protection Directive'
and EU legislation protecting confidentiality of information (see
the DTI web site). The
main point of the change in the law is to provide employers to the
right to ensure that their networks are not used for unlawful or
improper purposes, with several recent high profile cases having
hit the media recently.
The government consulted with a number of businesses,
agencies, charities and private individuals, with those professional
bodies and businesses that responded broadly in agreement with the
government's actions. Launching the consultation process in August,
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry remarked that there is
a strong role for government in the new 'knowledge economy' but
that the role of government is 'to be active but not interventionist'.
Some, such as the Alliance for Electronic Business, have even argued
that the regulations are too narrow, and that they 'should authorise
all interceptions relating to legitimate business activity such
as monitoring, archiving and accessing relevant communications with
the exception of specifically excluded practices'.
Other groups, such as the British Computer Society,
were more cautious, indicating that the Data Protection Officer
should be involved in the process, with individuals commenting in
a private matter being the most sceptical, one commenting that 'the
draft Regulations treat interception as a casual matter. Private
communications should not be intercepted unless a crime is being
committed.'
In practice, businesses and institutions have been
monitoring employees' communications for some time, and the regulations
are in part meant to formalise such procedures to ensure that companies
do not fall foul of the law. As trade unions have pointed out, however,
the entire process may fall foul of Article 8 of the Human Rights
Act, recently incorporated into UK law, which ensures an individual's
right to privacy.
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