November 23, 1997

VIEWPOINT / By AMITAI ETZIONI

Some Privacy, Please, for E-Mail

n employee's right to E-mail privacy has little or no legal foundation.

Various courts have ruled that neither the Federal nor state constitutions provide privacy protection regarding E-mail in the workplace, and only a few states have passed laws that specifically protect employees' E-mail messages. In general, office E-mail is no more protected than employees' telephones, which are fair game, given proper warning by the employer.

Illustration: Igor Kopelnitsky

In fact, many corporate policies warn employees that E-mail is about as private as making a personal call over a speaker phone in a crowded office. At employee orientations at Kmart, new workers are told that personal use of E-mail could result in dismissal. And many employers haven't shied away from exercising their right to examine workers' E-mail.

While statistics differ, various surveys agree that more than a third of corporations regularly monitor their employees electronically, which generally includes E-mail spot-checks. (The actual number may be higher because not all executives are likely to be candid when questioned about surveillance practices.)

Recently, large companies have also used new software, like Assentor or Spyglass Surfwatch, that allows them to screen large numbers of messages without actually reading them. The software detects certain key words that hint at behavior the company is seeking to control, then retrieves those messages for perusal.

Aside from exercising what they consider their legal right, corporations rationalize eavesdropping on other grounds. Surveillance, they argue, is needed to insure that productivity is maintained, that trade secrets are kept, that crimes are not committed on their premises and that employees do not use E-mail to harass one another.

(In a case that was dismissed last summer in Federal court, Morgan Stanley was sued by black employees who contended that a hostile environment existed at the firm because a racist message was sent on the E-mail system. Chevron agreed to a settlement with four female employees who contended that sexist jokes, circulated via the company's computer system, were part of a pattern of sexual harassment.)

   Employees do have some recourse if their corporations have granted certain privacy rights. But few companies have done so, and even then their workers must be willing to take their cases to court. Corporations, however, would be well advised to grant employees a measure of privacy. After all, companies are not merely places of employment; they are something of a community, too.

"On the job" is where many employees form much of their social network, where they make friends and develop loyalties.

Related Article Big Brother as a Workplace Robot (July 24, 1997)

In the 1980's, corporations were so worried about competing that they paid little attention to things like communal feelings or their employees' commitment to the workplace. But many companies have recently recognized that their streamlining has gone too far -- that impersonal efficiency is often penny-wise but pound-foolish, that corporate interests may be better served by a happier labor force. Indicators of this progression include so-called dress-down days, corporate retreats and enhanced parental leave.

Popular fears about privacy violations, real or imagined, offer a particularly inviting opportunity for corporations to show support for workplace community. A granting of privacy rights at work can demonstrate this concern, especially if it comes as a gesture of genuine trust rather than a step required by law.

The details matter less than the sentiment behind them, but some options come readily to mind. Employers, for example, could provide employees with a bloc of expressly private E-mail terminals -- perhaps equipped with encryption software. Or companies could stipulate that messages preceded by a code word -- or all messages sent to an employee's home -- will not be screened unless there is evidence from some other source that a crime has been committed or that a corporate policy has been violated. The employer might even declare a maximum number of private messages.

Other avenues may well be found, but companies first need to accept a basic point: that even if they aren't required to provide their employees with E-mail privacy, it would be more communitarian, and possibly profitable, to do so.  

---

Amitai Etzioni is director of the Institute of Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University and the author of The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society" (Basic Books, 1996).

---

Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.

• Assentor

• Spyglass Surfwatch

Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company