Under Surveillance
- Article 4 of 77
- Information Age, January 2001
How can organisations monitor employees' Internet and email activities for abuse, without infringing their right to privacy?
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Palmer realised that unmonitored emails could quickly damage Gartmore's reputation. Palmer says the company has received two main benefits from installing an email monitoring system, Mimesweeper from Irish company, Baltimore Technologies. “Every email that goes out is the same quality as if it was a letter on company-headed paper. And the queuing time of business mails has been cut down: the whole system is much quicker.”
Since staff are made aware the email system is a business tool, Palmer maintains, there are few complaints about email being monitored. “Content security is about being responsible for your company's data and, as a result, taking the security policy to the heart of corporate strategy.”
However, it is unwise to rely on monitoring systems as a panacea for improper use of the Internet or email, if they are not sophisticated enough or if physical security is not great. Peter Norbury, employment specialist at law firm Eversheds, acted for a senior executive who was being undermined by emails sent out in her name by a subordinate.
“They didn't turn up on the email monitoring system because they were in a sort of code. These people know what they are doing. They use innocuous words.” She found out about it because a colleague showed her a circular adding: “This doesn't sound like you.”
Similarly, a solicitor was almost fired because his company's monitoring system had detected he was visiting web sites with at least 70% flesh-tone images - porn sites, it suggested. A search of the log revealed he had in fact been visiting the web site of well-known pink-coloured newspaper, the Financial Times.
Even the police have had problems with monitoring employees. Sergeant Gurpal Singh Virdi was suspended by London's Metropolitan Police after being accused of sending racist hate mail to ethnic minority colleagues at Ealing police station in West London.
The Complaints Investigation Bureau of the Metropolitan Police investigated Virdi, and officers discovered someone using his log-on had typed the first batch of letters. A second set had been printed off by someone using a different password - but from a terminal close to where he worked.
However, he was vindicated in August 2000 when an industrial tribunal cleared him, saying there was no evidence he had sent the mail. Indeed, the racist messages were probably never even in the computer printouts studied by the police, according to the tribunal. Had the logs been more detailed or physical security greater, Virdi might well never have been accused, sparing the Met a damages suit amounting to B#150,000 as well as legal costs and bad publicity.
Dismissal for inappropriate use of a company's systems is, however, becoming an increasingly common recourse for employers. In 1999, automotive repair company Kwik-Fit sacked two workers who were having an affair after their erotic emails were intercepted by management.
In September 2000, mobile phone company Orange sacked more than 45 members of staff for downloading pornographic images from the Internet and sending them through the Internet email system.
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