Privacy Issues in the Community College Workplace

Deal v. Spears 425 An owner of a store that had been burglarized installed a recording device to automatically and surreptitiously record all telephone conversations in the hope of identifying whether the criminal activity was an “inside job.” The court found that the employer’s request to the employee to restrict the frequency of her personal telephone calls and a warning that the calls might be monitored failed to provide sufficient notice that employee telephone conversations would be tape-recorded. Biby v. Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska 426 The University terminated Biby, a technology and transfer coordinator, for misrepresenting himself and his authority to a private technology company that later threatened litigation against the University. To investigate the threatened litigation, the University, among other things, searched Biby’s work computer files. Biby alleged that the search of his computer violated his constitutional privacy rights. The district court disagreed, granting the University’s summary judgment motion, and the Eighth Circuit affirmed. The Court reasoned that public employers may intrude upon constitutionally protected privacy interests of their employees for investigations of work-related misconduct, so long as the searches are reasonable in their scope and manner. The Court found insufficient evidence presented by Biby that the search was unreasonably intrusive. In addition, the Court found that Biby had no expectation of privacy in his workplace computer files because University’s policy allowed search of a computer user’s files in order to respond to discovery requests. Clauson v. Superior Court of Los Angeles 427 The appellate court allowed an employee and his family to pursue both punitive damages for alleged invasion of privacy as well as statutory wiretapping and eavesdropping penalties based on the employee’s allegations that his employer installed eavesdropping devices in his office and wiretapped his private office and telephone. Further, the employee alleged that his employer secretly tape- recorded “several hundred telephone conversations” that the employee had with his wife and children and that the taped conversations involved “confidential communications, including private family matters.” McVeigh v. Cohen The employee in this case was able to successfully argue that his employer had unlawfully monitored his Internet access. 428 Timothy McVeigh, who bears no relation to the Oklahoma City bombing criminal, is a naval officer who sought an injunction to prohibit the Navy from discharging him based on his sexual orientation. The Navy began investigating McVeigh’s sexual orientation when a civilian forwarded an e-mail message from McVeigh, sent to her through the America Online Service (AOL), which provided some evidence that McVeigh was homosexual. The Navy then contacted AOL and sought further

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