Companies and employees fight for control over e-mail.
Ray Van Eng (04/07/97)
But you do not have to be powerful or famous to be stung by the use of e-mails. For many of us, e-mails are like causal conversation. We send them out without giving too much thought to it. Actually, e-mails are more dangerous than we think. But first, how reliable are e-mails? Unlike the students, we know that e-mails do reach their destinations, although 3.4% of them don't, according to BugNet, a consulting firm in Bellingham, WA. And that is about three times higher than first class mail. That is also to say that e-mail is not the most reliable way for sending messages. Contrary to what some of us may think, e-mails can not be destroyed easily after they have been sent out. We may think that once we deleted them, they will cease to exist, but the truth is traces of them will remain or back-up copies were made for archival and re-transmission purposes in one computer or another when the messages pass through the Internet pipeline. That is how the Secret Service was able to trace the offending e-mail to the students. Increasingly, the United States government agencies are relying on e-mail for communication with Americans. After receiving 300,000 e-mail messages from the public on whether to allow local phone companies to charge higher fees for Internet access, the Federal Communication Commission is contemplating recognizing e-mails as formal paper comments. And when it comes to money matters, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is bullish about the use of e-mail to exchange information. Stock brokers can chat freely on the phone with clients but e-mails are regarded as written communications which would require a supervisor's review. SEC's implication seems to mean that e-mail can have legal significance in a court dispute. So what do we do about the situation? A consortium of three companies think that they have a brilliant idea. Sequel Technology, SRA International, and Integrals are putting together a software application that would help corporations in the security and financial services industries to detect keywords or terms in e-mail messages used in the discussion of confidential information, pressure selling or any other topics that include inappropriate or offensive languages. The suspicious e-mails are put aside for officials to decide what course of action to take. The yet-to-be named product is scheduled to be available in July 1st. These kinds of solutions lead straight to the question of employee privacy. Does your employer has the right to read your e-mail? The quick answer seems to be no. In a recent survey done for Merrill Lynch, 74% of the public and 88% of technology experts think that not even the government has the right to read our e-mails for the good cause of fighting crime or improving national security. Since the passing of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in 1986, unauthorized interception and access to an employees' e-mail is against the law. However, a number of recent court rulings seemed to favor the view that email messages sent from company computers are also company properties. As a result, many companies are beginning to have their workers sign e-mail policy agreements that would give the management the power to monitor the content of their employees' computer messages and making sure that the electronic communication system is used only for business purposes. Generally, there are mainly two areas of concern that employers have: protection of intellectual property and sexual harassment cases. Both of these can get a corporation deep into troubled legal waters. In a highly publicized case last year, a former Borland executive was being accused of leaking trade secrets via e-mail to a competitor, Symantec which the executive later joined. A lawsuit ensued but was later dropped. In 1995, Chevron was forced into paying $2.2 million in a lawsuit brought on by a female group who alleged that a subsidiary of the company endorsed the transmission of sexually offensive material on its internal e-mail system. In another case, disgruntled former employees sued Nissan for wrongful dismissal and invasion of privacy because that group of workers were found using the company's e-mail system to consistently (despite repeated warnings) broadcast sexual material. Nissan got off that lawsuit quite handily because the Japanese car manufacturer had an explicit e-mail policy agreement with their staff. Perhaps one of the most colorful sexual harassment cases filed this year was the one involving Adelyn Lee, a female employee of the Oracle Corporation against the CEO of the company, Larry Ellison. The suit claimed that the billionaire executive sent a e-mail to the management to fire the employee after she had refused sexual favors to him. The case was originally settled out of court with Ellison agreeing to pay $100,000 in damages. However, an interesting twist brought the case to a complete turn-around. Ellison's lawyer were able to prove that the e-mail in question was actually doctored by the accuser. In the end, she was charged with perjury, filing a false document among other offenses and was found guilty by a jury of eight women and four men. |
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