reasons to encrypt mail and data

[agabriel at coe.neu.edu (Anthony J. Gabrielson)]

I don't think I would ever expect a company to honor privacy, its their
bandwidth.  Thats why I have my own mailserver.  I can ssh into it, and
just like that access my personal email, all of it is available to me.  I
can even send mail with out having to worry about this.  I can honestly say
nothing I transmit in email could not be read in a court of law.  So in
that sense, well maybe I'm lucky.  I just don't want my employer to know
that I am sending private emails at work, although as long as its not
extreme I don't they would care.

Maybe I'm not paranoid enough,
Anthony

On Sat, 6 Oct 2001, Steve wrote:

> Bill Horne wrote:
>
> > Well, no offense, but isn't that a little simplistic? "Companies ALLOW you..."?
> > "It's not your RIGHT..."? "...expect to get VIOLATED..."?
>
>
> As a company, I can tell you that I'm going to stick cameras in the warehouse to
> stop theft. I'm going to monitor your email for buzzwords. I will keep backups
> of all your email. So long as I disclose these things to you, you have no
> intrinsic expectation of privacy in these areas. If you tell the company that
> you're going to encrypt your emails so that they cannot read them or that you
> will disconnect the camera while in their warehouse so they can't see what
> you're doing while you're in there, you have that right. They also have a right
> to go after you.
>
> It is a courtesy given by the company to give the employee a "nice" place to
> work. If a company wants to be Big Brother or make you work in a cave, they'll
> get "rewarded" accordingly by how society responds. That's where the balance is
> struck, people are going to decide where your rights end and the company's
> begins, but it's not your sole discretion as to what you can and can't do with
> somebody else's (i.e., the corporation) property and vice-versa. A company has
> no right to see the numbers on your personal cell phone or your Palm that you
> bring to work, for example.
>
>
> With all of your examples, encryption is important. That point was never
> debated. You're not denied the right to communicate securely. What you can be
> denied is the method of communication for your private communications, in
> particular, using the company as your vehicle. Also, what's lost in some of your
> examples are what are really private company-related communications (e.g.,
> fraud, abuse, etc.) vs. private personally-related communications where you are
> not acting as an agent of the company. David Kramer has clarified his statement
> to distinguish it from personal use. I think the courts have already ruled that
> it's not your given right to use company assets to organize union activities.
>
> I could just as easily come up with examples showing how some abuser will use
> company resources for personal activities that put the company in some sort of
> danger. The company is suspicious and asks him what he's doing. He says go fish.
> "I have rights to use this for my personal use." It is the worker's right to
> deny access to the keys. It's also the company's right to take action.
>
> The real issue (well, at least with respect to this subthread of a subthread...)
> is whether or not you have a RIGHT to have an expectation of personal privacy
> using company assets when the company has guidelines as to how their equipment
> is to be used. This precedes your right to secure communication over the same
> equipment. If you have no right to use the company's assets for that purpose or
> have no right to an expectation of personal privacy to use the company's assets
> in that purpose, then the right to encryption is irrelevant.
>
> Your examples still do not show me how it is your RIGHT to use company assets
> for your personal purposes.
>
> Steve
> (hey, is that Goodwin's Law I see around the corner?)
>
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