Depends on the state I would assume, but of course IANAL. Some states have single party consent, and you're certainly not in a private area. You'd have to look into the eavesdropping laws where you live. You realize that many buildings have security cameras, right? I'm still very confused as to why you believe that your communications over a company owned platform should/would be private.
because I dont see the difference between having direct conversation vs having electronic conversation in the office premises. why would there be different rules for them?
Because one of them is almost literally a paper trail and the other is ephemeral?
As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…
There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll mak…
If you've worked anywhere with more than 50 employees, your emails are available for an admin to look at. This is required for legal discovery whenever a company is sued. For companies in regulated industries (healthcare, finance, etc) they may actually be required to keep all your communications for a period of time so that they can track if you leaked sensitive data (PHI, PII, trade secrets, etc)
As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…
> "Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons." Wow, THAT is highly illegal in Europe.
This is a good thing. People need to realize work chat is a paper trail...
A one-way paper trail in favor of the company. If a boss tells me I'm fired for being "too black" and then deletes my slack (and I don't have a screenshot), I'm not going to have any leverage to get proof unless I can get a subpoena (which I wouldn't be able to, most likely)
There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll mak…
> totalitarian surveillance > got offended > Bullies > soul-destroying shithole It's funny how these sort of comments always come from recently created throwaway accounts.
People can only candidly speak their minds on touchy subjects through anonymity. What a shock, if only we came up with a name for this effect a long time ago? If only that very effect wasn't so ironically relevant to the subject at hand?
> "Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons." Wow, THAT is highly illegal in Europe.
Please state the relevant law that it'd be breaking, I'm genuinely curious. Compliance tools are built into most cloud and enterprise offerings that allow this. Do you not have experience of enterprise/cloud email offerings?
At least in Switzerland and Germany, I thought they can record, and, in case of legal case, also read your emails provided that it is expected to give strong supporting material for the case.
Looking at all positive comments here, this is generally a bad news. Not sure how much compliant this is with the law, but in this case the law should be more protective towards employees. I imagine the following situation I write on a company-owned piece of paper - "My boss is an idiot". Then take this piece of paper put it in an envelope ( owned by the company as well ), write the name of my colleague and seal the…
Ah, Europe might be different. In the US, if your employer owns the platform, they have the right to all the messages for compliance. We view this as "if you have something private, don't do it on corp channels." This is usually fine unless you're harassing someone or engaging in something against corp ethics. https://www.privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/workplace-priv...
It really depends on national legislation, as well as individual contracts with unions or work councils. At least here, as a rule of thumb, as long as private internet use is permitted, the employer can't legally monitor traffic outside of very specific circumstances. AFAIK you can't get around that by prohibiting personal internet usage without generally enforcing that prohibition.
> Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. Why couldn't you just ask the recipient to look on his station? > We had to make all intern accounts into multi-channel guests after that Are 2 interns ever allowed to be alone together? I mean it's essentially the same, you are saying they can't be trusted so either you always need them in grou…
You are assuming that harassment was direct, sending messages to the accusers. My impression is that this was a group chatting privately about the accusers either making fun of them or coordinating actions. While this can be done through other channels (in person or private cellphone) allowing it on corporate infrastructure without monitoring is not acceptable.
If harassers, as you have mentioned, can simply switch to another channel, then what problem exactly is this measure trying to solve? I'm honestly confused.