Monitoring or Spying? (email privacy)

Member Name: leviathan

Product:	email privacy
Date:	04/11/00 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: N/A

Disadvantages: N/A

The phrase "In the National Interest" is already used as an excuse to issue 'D'notices, gagging orders, telephone tapping etc..
And whilst I understand CCTV can be a deterrent to would be criminals, it is also used to check out the 'shopping' habits of the innocent as well as the guilty..And
that any Government, but particularly a Labour one, could even consider using 'the national interest' to spy on private email is abhorrent..
Email like all mailings should remain private, except when the powers that be have good cause to suspect,or have proof of criminal activity..
General monitoring should, and must be strongly resisted..
However as I have some personal experience of the way some employee's misuse company equipment.. I feel an employer has the right to monitor all emails sent or received by staff.And all internet use..
In the case mentioned several employees were spending a large part of their day in internet 'chat-rooms',or 'game playing', and then emailing friends to share the details..
This can only be viewed as theft..Not only in the added cost to the employer, but in the time wasted whilst full salaries were being drawn..

I dislike the creeping invasion of ones privacy.The data that is now being kept on individuals in various guises, such as medical, financial, what you buy, what you wear etc..will in time be embedded in a plastic identity card..DNA samples will be taken a birth and kept in a national data-base..And I despair when I hear those in favour say, 'if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear from such data being kept'..as I profoundly disagree..The unscrupulous will always find a way to use such information for their own ends .

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