{"id":90906,"date":"2017-09-06T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aseryde.com\/?p=90906"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:00:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T10:00:47","slug":"las-claves-de-la-sentencia-de-estrasburgo-sobre-la-vigilancia-de-los-correos-en-las-empresas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/las-claves-de-la-sentencia-de-estrasburgo-sobre-la-vigilancia-de-los-correos-en-las-empresas\/","title":{"rendered":"The keys to the Strasbourg ruling on the surveillance of emails in companies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nThe court rules in favor of a Romanian worker fired for having used the company's email for personal purposes
\nIn Spain, the courts require that companies provide prior warning to monitor email
\nTrade unions advocate that employee privacy takes priority<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nThe ruling made public by the Strasbourg Court on the possibility of companies monitoring their employees' emails refers to the case of Romanian citizen Mihai B\u0103rbulescu, who was fired in 2007 from the company where he worked after sending private messages from the company email.<\/p>\n

\nB\u0103rbulescu worked between 2004 and August 2007 in the sales department of a private engineering firm where he was instructed to create a Yahoo Messenger account in order to respond to customer inquiries. On 13 July 2007, the company management informed him that his messages and emails (coming and going from this Messenger account) had been monitored for a week and he was even shown verbatim transcripts of personal emails where he sometimes discussed sex and health issues with his partner and his brother.<\/p>\n

\nCourt's Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nThe ruling has protected the Romanian worker as respect for private and family life, and for the home and correspondence of citizens has been violated, and has determined that companies cannot monitor the professional emails of their employees without prior notice.<\/p>\n

\nThe court found that the Romanian courts, which upheld B\u0103rbulescu's dismissal, violated Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights, the first paragraph of which states: \u201cEveryone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nAccording to the ruling, the company failed to balance its right to maintain proper operations with B\u0103rbulescu's right to privacy. According to the judges, in addition to having warned its employee in advance that he was being monitored, it should have presented "legitimate reasons" justifying such a drastic measure.<\/p>\n

\nPrivate uses: to a certain extent<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nThe Strasbourg judges consider that although the internal rules of the company prohibit the use of the Internet for private purposes, this cannot reduce to nothing \u201cthe exercise of social private life at work\u201d.<\/p>\n

\nThe ruling cannot be appealed by the affected company, as the decisions of the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court are final.<\/p>\n

\nPrecedents in Spain<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nIn Spain, the use of telematic means and their compatibility with work has been regulated by means of a court ruling. In 2007, the Supreme Court issued the first ruling unifying doctrine that established limits on the control of companies over the use of company-owned computers by employees. It determined that surveillance could not invade privacy, especially if employees had not been given clear and specific warnings of the limits and controls that would be applied.<\/p>\n

\nWhat is giving a clear warning? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\nIn 2013, the Constitutional Court simplified this requirement considerably, exempting employers from giving specific notice. It accepted as valid a single reference in a collective agreement that prohibited \u201cthe use of the company\u2019s IT resources for purposes other than those related to the content of the work performed.\u201d With that notice, it said, there was no longer \u201ca well-founded and reasonable expectation of confidentiality,\u201d and there was no interference.<\/p>\n

\nHowever, subsequent rulings insist on the need for a specific notice that professional email can be reviewed. This is the case of a recent ruling, dated March 17, 2017, by the Supreme Court. A company had dismissed a worker based on evidence obtained from a conversation in her professional email without her consent. And the court rejected this evidence. It recalled that "the ordering and regulation of the use of computer resources owned by the company is admissible," as well as "the company's power of surveillance and control," but "always with full respect for fundamental rights," among which is the right to privacy. It was not proven that the company had "proceded correctly in obtaining the evidence."<\/p>\n

\nReactions and consequences of the Strasbourg ruling<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nRegarding the Strasbourg ruling, union sources maintain that they prefer not to comment until they know the fine print in detail. However, they stress that in the previous cases that have occurred in Spain and in which both CC OO and UGT have supported the workers' demands, it has been shown that, above all and if there has been no prior notice of control, the privacy of the employee takes precedence over the interference of the companies.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The court rules in favor of a Romanian worker who was fired for using the company email for personal purposes. In Spain, the courts require that companies provide prior warning before monitoring email. Trade unions advocate that employee privacy takes priority. The ruling made public by the Romanian Court [\u2026]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aseryde.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}