BA spied on staff

[A and C]

Dingbaticus

It should be clear for all ( without an axe to grind) that this is likely to be a grey area of law.

Persons do have the right to confidentiality but also if you give someone a piece of equipment to do a job you have the right to ensure that they are not abusing that equipment.

The courts might well take the view that using the computer for company related Union business was legitimate and the confidentiality protected (a view that I hold) but some in the company who see the union as the arch enemy might not take that view.

The trouble is that in these days of leagal responsibility if an employee has ( let's say ) child porn on his company computer it is likely that the employer who has the deepest pockets is the one who is likely to end up in the high court while the employee ends up in the criminal court.

So it is highly likely that someone in the company IT department might well use the legitimate excuse that they were searching a company computer for porn while really looking at the confidential Union activity.

Dingbaticus, to answer your question I am not any sort of lawyer, I run an aircraft leasing business, one of the things we looked at doing was supplying an iPad to customers loaded with the company Jepp subscription and other useful aviation data. In the end we decided that having company iPads in the hands of the customers was likely to expose the company to unlimited liability if they abused them so we did not go ahead with this idea.

In short it just takes a bit of common sense to see that the leagal structure is running hard to try to keep up with technical advancement, this can only end up in court cases who's outcome is very hard to predict......indeed a very grey area !
I would not put any thing that was not directly work related on a company device and keep all other topics ( including Union stuff) on a device that I own and control........... That way the confidentiality issues are crystal clear.