SemperFiDownUnda,
I'm not missing your point, and any opinion I take may well be solely my own but I'm entitled to that.
All I'm saying is the EU Convention on Human Rights and legal precedents set by it do mean that a company does not have a legal right to read all e-mails sent by employee's. They are legally entitled read email content if they have genuine reason to believe an email is against their interests or illegal, but if an employee finds they are doing this and wants to contest what they are doing the legal onus is on the employer to prove what they are doing is not in breach the employees rights not the other way around.
I don't contest there are a variety of ways to argue this point but the Law is the Law and and in the EU, legal precendents and legislation, are now quite clear on what can and can't be done. I'm happy to debate the ethics and morals of email monitoring, but not the lagality as this is clear.
Personally, I rarely send personal emails at work, and if I have to they never contain anything that is illegal, against the interests of my employer or anything I don't want them to know because at the end of the day, whether reading all of my emails is illegal or not, it's possible and, as the saying goes, there's little point shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
We all live in the real world, and it's true to say that any communication not delivered directly and privately can be intercepted, (in fact with modern technology it may be true to say it's actually impossible to deliver a communication entirely privately). So, any communication we make needs to be tempered with this reality and awareness of the consequences of our actions. I apprecite and will listen to all opinions on this, and pretty much any other, matter but, as is human nature, I will draw my own conclusions based on my knowledge, understanding of situations, experience and perception, as will you. As will business', and all we're doing here is providing a representative of a business, (and our deveoted listeners!), with a range of opinion and fact from which they can draw their own conclusions and make a decision, probably not only on the subject at hand but us as well...
...still, I have enjoyed the thread and it has been very enlightening in a lot of ways.
Cheers all!
Rhys
Thought out... Maybe,
Opinionated... Probably
But it is only an opinion!