I agree with Mouss and others about voting with your feet.
I'm not sure I agree with his definition of ownership.
Who would want to work for a company who doesn't even trust you to do
your work properly. They may as well hire convicts for the amount of
trust company XYZ has. Perhaps it should screen it's employees more
carefully or have a contract that forbids anything they don't want.
That way if they are sued, they can sue ABC for breaking the contract.
When I get a PC from work I lock it up as hard as can be. no-one,
including my boss is allowed to do anything to it. When I leave it is
still locked and if they want to use their PC again they will have to
reformat and reinstall everything loosing anything on the disk. They
may own the data on the disk, but they own the lockdown system too.
Hey, they can alway pay me to come and move some data about their
systems if they really need something from it.
If I found I was being monitored without my consent I should probably
be able to sue the company for violating my privacy, but I would resign
immediately. I wouldn't mind being monitored if I knew what was being
monitored and it was part of my signed contract.
The definitions being bandied about are pretty strange. If ABC does a
turd on a keyboard at work, does that belong to XYZ? Yes of course it
does since if someone else trips on it they sue XYZ not ABC. The same
is true if a burglar trips on your hose in the back yard and is hurt.
He can sue you no matter who put it there. You can try to prosecute the
burglar for trespassing but that doesn't help you footing the medical
bills.
To monitor or not to monitor? It's not effective.
You can monitor all you like but committed flouters will find another
way. Ever heard of asci art. I've seen some incredibly accurate porno
sent by email this way. Looks like junk until you resize, select the
right font and center it. For all XYZ knows employee DEF is using
employee ABC's PC to read porn or email company documents while ABC
is in the toilet.
If I was an employee in the U.S. I would periodically monitor logs
to see if anyone is using anything that might get _me_ into trouble.
This would be stated in the employment contract. If something is found
I would warn suspects that they may be breaking their contracts. If it
continues despite my warnings, employees proven to be guilty would
be terminated.
There is a lot of leway in "might get me into trouble". I would
attempt to find out what is a legitimate risk. If there is a problem
I can say I did everything possible to prevent it.
As far as wasting time goes, if my employee gets the jobs done as
required, then happy surfing. If that interferes with others trying
to do their job I can do two things.
1. Talk to the individual.
2. Get more bandwidth. Many jobs require surfing. They should all be
able to do it at the same time so this makes sense.
Also, a lot of people use privacy notices on their sinatures. I'm not
sure if this helps but I don't think a company can legally read this
mail?
Hugh.
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