Do employers have a right to monitor employees’ e-mails while on the job? This important issue is raised in a lawsuit filed earlier this month against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The legal issue is whether employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy when using personal e-mail accounts on workplace computers.
The lawsuit was filed earlier this month
by six whistle blowers at the FDA who allege that their private e-mails
were extensively monitored after they began complaining to lawmakers
about serious irregularities in the agency’s medical device review
process. In the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia, the six alleged that the FDA installed spyware on their
workplace computers to monitor and intercept their communications.
The complaint acknowledges that the
intercepted correspondence was created, transmitted, received, and
viewed on government-issued computers and government-owned networks. But
it noted that the e-mail was private, password protected, and sent
using third-party, non-governmental e-mail services such as Yahoo and
Gmail.
The intercepted communications also
included e-mail sent from private e-mail accounts on private equipment
by family members, friends and associates, but viewed on FDA-issued
computers.
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