Reading Your Keystroke: Whose Mail Is It?

Abstract

Employers want their employees to do their job and meet the company’s goals. Legitimate electronic monitoring at work offers business organisations the opportunity to detect employees whose workplace behaviour indicates a serious problem. However, surveillance of employee’s electronic mail is intrusion into the employee’s private life. It can potentially undermine employees’ respect for their employers and ruin previously good working relationships. There have been numerous litigations involving electronic mail, including several high-profile legal cases. Balancing the employer’s right to monitor its workforce with the employees’ right to privacy with respect to technology use is becoming an increasingly contentious issue in the workplace.