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2017-09-22

Employers have to warn employees if they want to monitor their e-mails – ECHR’s judgment

The Case Barbulescu v. Romania concerned monitoring of correspondence sent from an employee’s business Yahoo Messenger account. Mr Barbulescu used the account to communicate with his fiancée and his brother. Because of using the messenger for personal purposes the employer terminated Mr Barbulescu’s employment contract.

The last judgment in the case was issued by the Grand Chamber – the “second instance” of the European Court of Human Rights (the ECHR). The ECHR ruled that:

  • the right to respect for private life may include correspondence sent from business premises (including, among other things, messages sent via Yahoo Messenger account for business use);
     
  • correspondence monitoring may be allowed only when the warning from the employer is given before the monitoring activities are initiated;
  • the notice should include the extent and nature of the employer’s monitoring activities;
     
  • there should be specific reasons to justify monitoring of employees’ communications;
     
  • it has to be examined whether the aim pursued by the employer could be achieved by less intrusive methods than accessing the actual contents of employee’s communications. 

The full text of the judgment is available under the following link:
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#{%22tabview%22:[%22document%22],%22itemid%22:[%22001-177082%22]}

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