[plug] legality of internet traffic monitoring

[Peter Wright]

On 12/01 14:38:01, Tim Bowden wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-01-12 at 13:43 +0900, Peter Sutter wrote:
> > I am currently doing some work for a small company with about 10
> > office employees,
[ ...snip the rest... ]
> > What am I really up to? Do I violate privacy laws when monitoring
> > IP traffic on a privately owned network?
> 
> What you're asking for really is legal advice (which you won't get here),

Absolutely.

However, it may be worth pointing out to such employees that if other
employers of a certain size and likelihood-to-have-certain-weight-of-
legal-advice-behind-them do much the same thing as you... then you at
least have some degree of "well, if it's against the law, how come
*they* can get away with it?" logic to work with. :)

In that spirit, I can at least confirm from my own recent experience
that the West Australian **Police** monitor their employees' internet
traffic. And they _heavily_ restrict it as well.

I'm sure others on this list will be able to confirm similar
experience with similar WA employers.

[ snip ]
> That's not to say you won't have problems.  If disciplinary action
> is taken and staff feel you've been unreasonable (even if you
> haven't) you may well loose a lot of staff goodwill.

Aside from the loose/lose misspelling, I completely agree.

Treat employees like children and, well, the results shouldn't
surprise you too much. :)

> Good luck,
> Tim Bowden

Pete.
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