[techtalk] Sick of surf and porn addicts

[James Sutherland]

On Tue, 29 May 2001, Caitlyn M. Martin wrote:
> James wrote:
>
> > Just as a company is free to
> > ban personal 'phone calls, or charge for them, but not to record them, the
> > company can prohibit WWW surfing, or charge users for the bandwidth they
> > use - but logging what users do is a violation of their privacy. Usage
> > logs must not be made available to ANYONE without a court order (that
> > bit's a legal requirement, BTW).
>
> Actually, the courts have disagreed with you.

The *US* courts, you mean? I'm talking about *EU* law. That's the whole
point: this is legal in the US, but NOT in the EU. One of the few areas
the EU has got it right, IMHO - for the most part, I think I prefer the US
system (2nd amendment, better recognition of the concept of self-defence,
etc).

> Companies, at least in the US, can log usage legally.  Indeed, both my
> current and previous employers do.  Our web filter server also sends
> you a nastygram if you go to an inappropriate site, and copies quite a
> bit of management.

Which would land the company a big fine in the EU. Or worse, in some
cases.

> Hence people tend to avoid such sites like the plague where I work.
> It's not worth the hassle.
>
> The only caveat is I believe they have to tell the employees that they
> *are* logging all of it.  Both places I've worked over the past
> several years make that *very* clear during initial orientation.  You
> know about it from the day you are hired.

Here, if you recorded calls without prior notification, you could have
your access to the telephone network revoked. For a call centre, that's a
pretty bad thing. Again, it's never been done AFAIK, but it does make a
nice stick for the regulator to beat rogue call centres with: "Keep
calling people who request you to stop, and you won't have any phone
lines."


James.