E-mail court case

Abstract

"When Alana Shoars arrived for work at Epson America one morning in January 1990, she discovered her supervisor reading and printing out electronic mail messages between other employees. As electronic mail administrator, Ms. Shoars was appalled. When she had trained employees to use the computerized system, Ms. Shoars told them their mail was private. Now a company manager was violating that trust.When she questioned the practice, Ms. Shoars said, she was told to mind her own business. A day later, she said she was fired for insubordination. She has since filed a $1 million wrongful termination suit.. . . She still bristles about Epson: 'You don't read other people's mail, just as you don't listen to their phone conversations. Right is right, and wrong is wrong.'Michael Simmons, chief information officer at the Bank of Boston, disagrees completely, 'If the corporation owns the equipment and pays for the network, that asset belongs to the company and it has a right to look and see if people are using it for purposes other than running the business,' he said." (excerpt from Rifkin, NY Times, Dec. 8, 1991)