Employers to stop overtly monitoring emails
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Employers to stop overtly monitoring emails
Workers Online
Issue No. 215 02 April 2004
News
Workers Victory - We’re Legal!
Our loyal readers have won the legal right to receive Workers Online emails on their office computers under ground-breaking privacy laws announced by the Carr Government this week.
Following a four-year campaign by unions, NSW will become the first state in Australia to prohibit employers filtering union emails through office servers.
Several employers, including Channel Seven have prevented unions communicating with members during industrial action by filtering out all message coming from the union.
Unions have argued this is .an inappropriate use of employer power, likening the right to receive union emails to the well-established principle of union noticeboards in the workplace.
The break-through is part of a package of measures that will be covered by the Email Surveillance Act, which also includes:
- employers requiring a court order before they can covertly spy on worker emails
- and employers being required to develop a code of email usage in consultation with workers before they can overtly monitor usage
These measures will bring computer monitoring into line with the right oif workers not to be secretly filmed at work.
The NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson said the move was truly an historic development and a recognition that workers using computers at works have privacy rights.
"By bringing legislation forward the Carr Government can rightly claim to be taking an national leadership role in respect of workplace rights."
Robertson says the Labor Council would continue to work constructively with the government to ensure the passage of the legislation in the current session of Parliament.
http://workers.labor.net.au/215/news3_legal.html
I will never feel comfortable knowing that management are watching every word I type.
Issue No. 215 02 April 2004
News
Workers Victory - We’re Legal!
Our loyal readers have won the legal right to receive Workers Online emails on their office computers under ground-breaking privacy laws announced by the Carr Government this week.
Following a four-year campaign by unions, NSW will become the first state in Australia to prohibit employers filtering union emails through office servers.
Several employers, including Channel Seven have prevented unions communicating with members during industrial action by filtering out all message coming from the union.
Unions have argued this is .an inappropriate use of employer power, likening the right to receive union emails to the well-established principle of union noticeboards in the workplace.
The break-through is part of a package of measures that will be covered by the Email Surveillance Act, which also includes:
- employers requiring a court order before they can covertly spy on worker emails
- and employers being required to develop a code of email usage in consultation with workers before they can overtly monitor usage
These measures will bring computer monitoring into line with the right oif workers not to be secretly filmed at work.
The NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson said the move was truly an historic development and a recognition that workers using computers at works have privacy rights.
"By bringing legislation forward the Carr Government can rightly claim to be taking an national leadership role in respect of workplace rights."
Robertson says the Labor Council would continue to work constructively with the government to ensure the passage of the legislation in the current session of Parliament.
http://workers.labor.net.au/215/news3_legal.html
I will never feel comfortable knowing that management are watching every word I type.
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Most large corporations with an active IT division actually ban attachments on incoming emails apart from Word Documents/Adobe Acrobat reader files in order to reduce the risk of virus infections.
Brothers company does this and their infection rate so far is nil.
Brothers company does this and their infection rate so far is nil.
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rofl.
Bans like that are useless. My wifes company has a similar ban so I just rename everything I attach to her as .doc and put what it should have at the end ie .jpg, .mpg etc in the text and she renames them after receiving.
All monitoring by companies does is puts the staff under suspicion. Anyone who actually wants to do harm to a system will do so and do it very easily I might add. Take for example the bloodhound virus. It infects your machine by hiding in a web page and activating itself if you don't have the correct ports blocked. They use email and internet explorer ports so you have no chance of stopping them unless the internet access at your place of work blocks, well, the internet or if you use a decent browser like mozilla or firebird.
I understand that the entire point of the thread is refering to Union Emails but the excuses used to block such goings on will be "OMG VIRUS!!!!!"
Bans like that are useless. My wifes company has a similar ban so I just rename everything I attach to her as .doc and put what it should have at the end ie .jpg, .mpg etc in the text and she renames them after receiving.
All monitoring by companies does is puts the staff under suspicion. Anyone who actually wants to do harm to a system will do so and do it very easily I might add. Take for example the bloodhound virus. It infects your machine by hiding in a web page and activating itself if you don't have the correct ports blocked. They use email and internet explorer ports so you have no chance of stopping them unless the internet access at your place of work blocks, well, the internet or if you use a decent browser like mozilla or firebird.
I understand that the entire point of the thread is refering to Union Emails but the excuses used to block such goings on will be "OMG VIRUS!!!!!"
