July 2008 Archives
Email and other electronic communications are defacto business records and public agencies must take steps to preserve and give access to government records or face the consequences. (read more)
Whether we are talking about email, IM, Text, VOIP or any other communication stream, recent cases have challenged the presumption of corporate privacy, privilege and ownership. Proper policy and training seem to be the answer for domestic corporations who use a SaaS email provider or other US based Text/SMS provider. When dealing with world-wide infrastructure, a corporation must engage specialized counsel and actively monitor cases and publications like those of The Sedona Conference Working Group 6: International Electronic Information Management, Discovery and Disclosure. Although the rules seem to be changing, companies can make informed risk vs. cost decisions to minimize their potential exposure if they are cognizant of the issues and do not just pretend that they do not exist. (read more)
The recent Quon v. Arch Wireless decision has raised many questions about a company's ability and right to monitor employee communications. Fortunately, a deeper read shows that the real issues centered around the employee's reasonable expectation of privacy, which a well documented and communicated policy solves handily. So an employee might ask, "I know that the company owns my email, but do they really read it?" (read more)
One of the hardest things in a HR investigation is to disprove false accusations of sexual harassment, inappropriate content, fixed bids and many other scenarios. It is very easy to fake printed out email and IM conversations that would not stand up to close scrutiny if still in electronic form. The only way to prove that someone did not send a message is to have all the messages within that time frame and the ability to retrieve them. Think about how hard it is to set the context for an off-color email without having the complete historical conversations between a supervisor and a former employee. (read more)
