E-mail Privacy

[herrickd at iccgcc.decnet.ab.com]

In article <15110 at ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>, conca at handel.cs.colostate.edu (michael vincen conca) writes:
> 
> Aproximately 1 month ago, a certain employee was advised that he/she was
> was acting in an inappropriate manner and that they needed to make 
> certain adjustments in their attitude.  A meeting was held between the head
> manager and this employee in which the above issue was discussed.  All of
> this was summarized in a memo which was E-mailed to the employee.
> 
> Yesterday, this employee was terminated.  He/she was allowed to gather
> their things and purge all of their personal files from the system.  Today,
> my boss asked if it would be possible to retrieve this employee's E-mail
> off of backup, find the memo, and print it out in case it was needed as 
> evidence in a possible court case.
> 
Here are some suggested actions:

1.  With the permission of the sender of the memo, go through his backups
    to find his copy of the memo and provide it to management.

2.  For your own protection, isolate a backup containing the employee's
    copy of the memo and preserve that backup in a bank vault somewhere.
    Tell management that you expect you would be able to produce it in
    response to a subpoena, but don't think it is appropriate to do so
    without legal compulsion.  ("You expect" means there is a good copy
    that you could swear is a correct copy preserved where you think
    it will not be destroyed accidentally or intentionally.)

3.  Take some precautions (unusual but not draconian) to protect the
    security of the working backups containing the ex employee's files.
    (Security against unauthorized access and security against tampering.)

If the author did not keep a copy long enough for it to get into an
overnight backup, give him a gentle education in the proper use of
mail.

With or without the author's copy, item two above should satisfy your
management and satisfy your conscience with respect to proper treatment
of private communications that pass through your hands.

dan herrick
herrickd at iccgcc.decnet.ab.com