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Becoming anti-social (Pt 2)

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29 January 2016 / Michael Salter , Chris Bryden
Issue: 7684 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Chris Bryden & Michael Salter bust some myths surrounding the Barbulescu case

“Bosses can snoop on workers’ private emails and messages”. “Britain has a new human right…freedom to spy on employees’ emails”. “Private messages at work can be read by European employers”. These were just three attention-grabbers (from The Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the BBC News website) following the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Barbulescu v Romania (App no. 61496/08). Perhaps predictably, a proper reading of the case reveals that matters are not quite so clear-cut.

Mr Barbulescu was a sales engineer. He was requested in the course of his employment to create a Yahoo Messenger account, for the specific purpose of communicating with his customers and responding to their enquiries. The employer had a written policy which prevented its computers and other equipment from being used for personal purposes. It transpired that Barbulescu had indeed used his account for such purposes, and was discovered due to monitoring of the Messenger account by

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