Guys,

Again, I don't want to get side-tracked.  Please bring it back on topic.

Thanks,

Eric


-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Tom DeReggi
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:56 PM
To: WISPA General List
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Employee Tracking Program

> Employers own the content of all correspondence
> That has been time tested.

Not true, from my experience. Expecially if the correspondance is 
non-business related.

Actually, I was involved in a case where the employer was successfully
sued 
by the employee for violating their employee's privacy.
The employer was threatening to fire certain employees, based on the
content 
(most likely porn) of personal Emails sent and read from work, and Web 
access to some sites.
We installed the original tracking system, and we de-installed it after
they 
lost the suit, and re-installed the new solution that did not put the 
employer at risk to lose another costly law suit of that nature.
Granted, 
this took place probably 8 years ago, when I was still in the LAN
network 
integration business. There could have been newer law changing
legislation.

Regardless of what the current laws are or are not, an Employer really
needs 
to think about whether they really want to go there in the first place,
to 
risk defending litigation. Privacy issues can be very complicated, and 
expensive to defend.  By default the legal system favors the employee in

almost all aspects, and the employer is held responsible for the burden
to 
setup the policies, proceedures, and agreements in advance in a way that
are 
law biding.  At minimum, a clear plan has to be defined on what the
privacy 
policy is. In many cases if a policy is set AFTER an employee starts 
employment, it can be argued that the employee was Coerced/forced to
sign an 
agreement that they did not want to agree to, or they'd lose the job
that 
they rely on, which they committed to based on other terms.  So there is

even the possibilty that signed privacy agreements can be thrown out as 
non-inforcible. Again, these are very generalized statements, and there
are 
many variables that go into what is and isn't legally inforcible.

Installing a solution that allows one to manage there network,
completely 
avoids the privacy issues and any law suits, and often accomplishes the
same 
goals, to keep employees focused on work and not personal activities.

To be clear, there are four issue here.
1) Tracking someone's use without letting them know that you are
tracking 
it. (remember why someone must disclose if a telephone call or
conversation 
is being recorded?)
2) Tracking someone's use with or without an official privacy/usage
policy. 
(remember discussions regarding ISPs privacy issues)
3) Whether you are allowed to track someone's personal/private Internet
use 
in the first place, and if so, how its distinguished which use/content
is 
personal/private versus business.
4) Whether being "on-the-clock" and within a "Business office" is enough
to 
for someone's Internet use/content to be considered "Business" property.

Prior to tracking Employee's use the Employer should have a clear legal 
understanding of how they can defend each and every one of these things,
are 
they are putting themselves at a legal risk.

I can tell you, the case I was involved in was not a small claims court 
case.  Big dollars were put on the table.  If this same situation
occured to 
a small company, I'd bet that 99% of the employers would be forced to
settle 
out of court early, and payoff the employee, because the cost to defend
the 
case would far outway the benefit, and getting compensation from the 
employee for the legal fees is not a likely thing to occur.

Its something to think about.

Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chuck McCown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Employee Tracking Program


> Not true.  Employers own the content of all correspondence, whether
> electronic or otherwise.
> That has been time tested.
> Plus, in this state we can record the phone calls.  We can record you
on 
> the
> phone without even notifying you if we call you or if you call us.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Tom DeReggi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:40 AM
> Subject: Re: [WISPA] Employee Tracking Program
>
>
>> Also note there are privacy legal issues here. Some opinions are that
it
>> is
>> illegal for an employer to secretly watch their employee's Internet
>> content
>> and/or usage.
>> That information is considered the property of the employee. This is
why
>> many organizations chose to restrict what their employees can do,
apposed
>> to
>> watch what is being done.
>>
>> If information is being tracked, it should be tracked in a non-biases
>> consistent way, with disclosure, or deployed with an alternate
duplicate
>> purpose . For example, if you install a Proxy server, that data will 
>> often
>> be available, but it could be defended as a security protection
measure.
>> (apposed to invasion of privacy and spying on employees)
>>
>> Tom DeReggi
>> RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
>> IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Eric Rogers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 11:11 AM
>> Subject: [WISPA] Employee Tracking Program
>>
>>
>>>I have a company that would like to track real-time and summary
>>> information of internet activity of it's employees (by IP).  They
are
>>> looking for summary information, not email content/instant messenger
>>> chats/passwords.  What would be ideal would be a passive device that
>>> acts like a sniffer that either hits layer 7 and reads the
>>> www.xxxxxx.com from the data portion of the packets, or just looks
at
>>> the DNS traffic, tracks IPs and reports it.  Maybe even amount of
>>> bandwidth spent at each IP... or something of that nature.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Any ideas?  I have recommended software that is a keylogger and
>>> recorder, but they want something that is totally transparent, i.e.
>>> sniffer.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Eric Rogers
>>>
>>> Precision Data Solutions, LLC
>>>
>>> (317) 831-3000 x200
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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