Privacy Issues in the Workplace

Epps v. St. Mary’s Hospital of Athens 444 The employer was held not to have violated the law when she intercepted an interoffice phone conversation between two employees who were making scurrilous and disparaging remarks about fellow employees. Bohach v. City of Reno 445 Police officers claimed violations of the Fourth Amendment and wiretap statutes and sought to halt their Department’s investigation into their possible misuse of the computerized paging system. The court held that the police officers did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their use of the computerized paging system and that the Department could access their electronic messages. The court stated that all the messages were recorded and stored, not because anyone was “tapping” the system, but simply because that was an integral part of the technology which stored messages in the central computer. Further, the Department had notified all users that their messages would be “logged on the network” and that certain types of messages were banned from the system. United States v. Simons 446 This case involved an employee’s use of the Internet. Mark Simons was employed as an electrical engineer within the Foreign Bureau of Information Services (FBIS) which is a part of the CIA. Simons had access to both a computer system, owned and operated by the CIA, and to the Internet. The CIA had an employee who managed the computer network for FBIS and who monitored the Internet traffic. The CIA conducted a search of which web sites were being frequented from their computer network and determined that Mark Simons was frequenting pornographic sites and that he had downloaded 1,000 documents that were pornographic in nature. Simons moved to suppress this evidence claiming that the CIA had conducted an illegal search in violation of his Fourth Amendment rights since the search was conducted without a warrant or other lawful justification. The court held that Simons did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to any Internet use since his employer had an official policy regarding such use which stated that official business use, incidental use, lawful use and contractor communications were permitted and that audits would be implemented to support identification, termination and prosecution of unauthorized activity and that audits would be capable of recording the various web sites visited by employees. United States v. Zeigler 447 A private employer, cooperating with a federal investigation, turned over to the FBI the contents of an employee’s workplace computer hard drive, which was found to contain child pornography. In a subsequent criminal proceeding, the employee sought to suppress the evidence on the basis that it allegedly resulted from a search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Ninth Circuit rejected

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