Should your agency be able to monitor your personal emails?
The Food and Drug Administration recently admitted that it monitored the personal emails of some of its employees. The Washington Post reports that the agency said it was concerned that employees were leaking confidential information out to the general public.
About two years ago, some FDA employees said they had worries about unsafe medical equipment and took their concerns to Congress. Last month, the Post broke the story that the FDA had, in fact, monitored Gmail communications between this group of doctors, who had concerns about medical devices that were not safe or effective.
The agency said it started looking at employee's emails in 2010, but the Post says it has evidence the surveillance started as early as January of 2009.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent a letter to the FDA on Thursday, saying such behavior is against the law.
The FDA has a warning that pops up when a user logs on stipulating that there is no expectation of privacy regarding any data that passes through -- or is stored on -- its system.
In his letter, the Congressman charges that the FDA was in the wrong because retaliation against whistleblowers is illegal.
What do you think? Should your agency be able to look at your personal email if you log on at work? Or is this stepping over the line?
Tags: communications, human resources, privacy, tech
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on -
That's certainly a tougher issue to deal with, but I'd think the basic rule is the same. Use employer equipment and resources ONLY for official work. Let them monitor, inspect as they please. Use your own equipment and resources for personal use.
This works IF the employer is supplying the equipment for telework, something they "should" be doing as a matter of fairness, AND for security. In fact, I'd think it's essential employers do that particularly since telework employees will likely be using the employer's network from home, and there's a lot of security issues that should not be left to be the responsiblity of the telework employee.
The only tough issue is the actual online ramp to the internet, which would probably be shared for both employer and personal use by most telework employees. If, however, different computers are used for personal and work, not a problem. Monitor the work computer, if it's essential. Never monitor the personal equipment.
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Permalink Reply by Peter Sperry on -
The problem is that many agencies expect employees to provide their own hardware if they choose to telework. Instead of issuing laptops to take home and instructing employees to only use the laptop for official business, they are issuing SecurId tokens and telling employees to log in remotely using their personal systems. Personally, I would be willing to invest a certain amount of my own money (upto $750) in a work only laptop that could be physically separated from my personal equipment in order to telework. Unfortunately, my agency has a requirment that teleworkers agree to allow physical inspection of their home office by supervisors. So I will not be teleworking anytime soon.
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Permalink Reply by Corey McCarren on -
Wow! They really require being able to inspect your home office? That seems to me a little pointless considering you could just work from the kitchen if you wanted to, and have an office just for show. I just fail to see the benefit of checking the home office, and I think it could be discriminatory. What if someone wants to telecommute but doesn't have an approved home office because there is no room in their house for one?
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Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on
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I've never been one to be overly concerned about reasonable efforts by an employer to ensure their equipment isn't being misused, since I don't feel threatened, if I haven't done anything wrong, but this is way over the line. And exactly what's the point? And what CAN they inspect? My washroom?
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Permalink Reply by Brian Gryth on -
Peter, this would probably depend on the end user agreement signed by the employee. I think we are seeing a situation where technology is out pacing the law.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on
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I'd be interested in seeing what happens when, and if this kind of agreement is challenged in a court. User agreements don't necessarily survive these challenges, and I have a sneaky feeling this is one that would not. Kind of scary if it did.
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Permalink Reply by Denise Petet on -
This is where the good ethics of your average employee come into play. Most people play by the rules and don't abuse so even while the employer can have the 'right' to dig into things, they don't usually need to.
And when they do need to that person's 'crimes' often become the focus and the defense of 'you had no right to snoop into the computer you bought me to work on to find those 89 pornographic photos I downloaded over your network' ends up not holding water.
The focus becomes so much on the crime that the methods get glossed over.So as long as most employees don't 'ask' to be snooped into, most employers can either pretend that they don't or they actually don't snoop, and the rules never get challenged.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Hammer on
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Certainly one of the concerns alluded to is the impact that such monitoring can have on employee trust and morale, which should not be treated lightly. That's as much a matter of how something is done/monitored as it is what is done/monitored. Being up front about the fact that one will be monitored is one means of establishing appropriate expectations between employer and employee, but that can also be perceived as a little heavy-handed if the grounds and terms for such monitoring seem unreasonable on the face of it.
All my surface mail at work (with the exception of internal stuff like pay stubs) gets opened up and resealed before I receive it, even things like newsletters and publications from other government agencies. On the other hand, I know this is happening to everybody and not targetting me specifically (a quick glance across everybody else's mailbox copnfirms this). Plus, the envelope closed back up with a piece of tape shows me that it has happened, and happened consistently, so there is little sense I am being specifically and clandestinely observed for any reason. With e-mail, that obvious presence doesn't occur so monitoring can happen without one's knowledge, which I think is a sticking point.
Some workplaces maintain several separate e-mail systems/servers, one for work internal to the organization and one for contact with the "outside world". That's one solution. Of course, that doesn't stop anybody monitoring that e-mail with the outside world.
Whatever approach is adopted by the employer, it should conform to all other existing guards and laws concerning invasion of privacy. People can't just tap your phone, they can hang around your bathroom window, they can't ask the bank how much money you have, and they can't open your mail. I suppose all of those things can be over-ridden if there is sufficient grounds to obtain the necessary warrants, but it can't just be something the employer does because they feel like it.
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Um, that's can't hang around your bathroom window, folks....can't, not can.
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Permalink Reply by Corey McCarren on
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When I worked for the New York State Education Department we had a lot of these types of warnings on the computers. I was fine with it because I didn't do much personal stuff on it and it wasn't my computer. I don't, however, think any employers should go around looking for trouble where it isn't and making workers uncomfortable. It seems like that is what the FDA may have been doing.
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Permalink Reply by Preston G. Baker on -
NYC agencies block access to personal e-mail accounts so employees simply do not have access. As such this approach basically eliminates this as an issue here!
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Permalink Reply by Corey McCarren on
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This was in Albany so I was still able to access my personal e-mail, I just usually didn't. The policy in Albany may be the same now as in NYC though, it's been 2 years since I interned there (realizing it's already been two years puts a knot in my stomach).
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