I'd like to hear (online or offline) from anyone who thinks / believes very strongly that their employer has no business poking around their work-provided computer / ESI  or monitoring their email or other electronic communications (and I want to emphasize that most organizations do not read every email or examine every computer -- they have policies and procedures to govern this process and utilize techniques involving software looking for certain words and phrases of concern).

I tend to get on a high horse because I am involved in internal investigations and see the uglier side of corporate America from time to time. I know there are people out there who simply don't believe that the employer has any right to monitor anything for any reason -- and most of them do nothing that would lead the organization to scrutinize them. They take the "personal" in "personal computer" very seriously. I'm trying to wrap my head around all sides of this issue and want to understand the rationale that people have who feel that what they do on a computer is sacrosanct, regardless of who owns the computer or provides the telecommunications infrastructure and facilities. However, if you feel that way, how do you propose that an organization protect its employees, intellectual property, trade secrets, and sensitive customer information (among many other sensitive types of information)?

I suspect that given the audience here (and our collective understanding of what is a record and what can be discoverable), there are very few who believe this strongly, so a sample from the Listserve is probably inconclusive.

As you consider the issue that was raised this morning, listen very closely to your organization's financial and IT leaders. I have heard recently from people I know in several major corporations that their organizations are giving considerable thought to an environment of "bring your own computer" (http://cunninghamabovetherim.blogspot.com/2009/04/atr-bring-your-own-computer.html). Companies that go in this direction bring blur to this issue and I fear that hundreds of millions of dollars of potential savings tends to drive the proposals, rather than considerations of intellectual property, records management, personal privacy, and e-discovery.


 Patrick Cunningham, CRM
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"Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." 
-- Colin Powell

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