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Computers without secrets for the head
Its superior will not be able to read its personal mail nor its archives. In order to make the revisions a previous norm must exist. “The illegal use of Internet was an excuse of dismissal”, assures Miguel Lóriz the Supreme one allows the companies to elaborate norms of control of use of Internet for its employees Is lunch time. You remain in the office and eat a sandwich in front of the computer. He stares at the last news in several Web and decides to buy by Internet tickets of train for the weekend. Later, he sends a pair of electronic mails to his friendly. Can its company control those small extraprofesionales incursions? A sentence of the Supreme Court says yes that. With a condition: it must exist a norm of the company on the use of Internet and a protocol of how they will be that inspection. Until where it can watch his company him. Who decides envelope which can be seen in Internet and what no. The Supreme one assures that the companies cannot prohibit the use of Internet totally. But who puts the limits. “The control mechanisms can be excessive and to invade certain areas of privacy. It is well that there is certain monitoring, but the risk is run of which the industralist has too much power. Who supervises to the controller”, says Miquel Lóriz, of Working Commissions. An element is outside that Great Brother. The company cannot read its personal files nor their electronic mails. The sentence of the Supreme Court, of the 26 of September, considers that the content of the electronic mail is protected - al just as the telephone letters and calls by the constitutional guarantee of the secret of the communications. The case of Juan A.P.C., has established the precedent. Juan worked like manager in a Galician company. A day its company called to a technician so that it repaired certain failures in his computer. When doing it, it was verified that the system had become infected of virus computer science “as a result of navigation by little safe pages of Internet”. It was continued reviewing the computer and it was discovered “old accesses to pornographic pages”. The company decided to keep those archives, to print the pages and to give everything to a notary. While, the employee did not know what he was taking control of his computer. Shortly after he was dismissed. The Supreme one has ordered its reinstatement because in the company there was no a norm that limited the use of the computer. Until this sentence, the terminal considered a personal effect of the employee, and it was compared to his ticket office. “The personal objects of the employees cannot be registered by the company - as it says article 18 of the Statute of the Workers unless there is a suspicion that an illicit act is being committed”, explains Íñigo Sagardoy, director of Sagardoy Lawyers. In addition, that registry must do with guarantees: it must become in the presence of a delegate of the workers, during the labor day and in front of the employee. Now the Supreme one considers, for the first time, that the computer is means that the industralist facilitates the employee so that he exerts his functions. “One says that he is perfectly allowed that the company investigates and controls the use that the employee does of him, and that includes the use of Internet”, Sagardoy says, that stresses that the sentence unifies, finally, the doctrine on the subject. But the Supreme one adds a shade that abre the debate. The company must previously establish the rules of use of those technological means - “with application of absolute or partial prohibitions” - and inform to the workers into which it is going to exist control and how it is going to become. Mechanisms that must be compatible with the respect to the dignity of the employee. “He is reasonable to have a certain personal use of the computers. But a thing is conectarte awhile and another one is to be hooked all the day. There it is the limit”, it thinks Silvia Bauzá, of the office of lawyers Go'mez Acebo & Pombo. For Sagardoy, the Supreme one “makes flexible” with this measurement the power of the industralist. The unions also are conscious of this new power. “We are in favor of which ethical codes settle down that they prohibit to visit sites with contents pornographic xenophobes or. But it must be done negotiating with the worker so that it is not unprotected”, say in working parties Carlos Sanchez Almeida thinks that the Supreme one has taken the first passage in a long way. “Until now the situation era of total insecurity. During many years the things have become bad. Many illegal registries have taken place”, assures. This labor lawyer does not agree absolutely in controlling what the employees with the computer do. “He is better to filter navigation than to watch a posteriori where they have entered”, he assures. He insists on which the workers must be conscious of the monitoring. Four years ago the heads of Esther G. entered their computer. They read his electronic mails. They reviewed his archives and they examined all the pages Web that had visited. They dismissed later it by illegal use of Internet. They sent a letter to him in which they notified the cause to him of his dismissal: “Due to the traffic of electronic mail of character personal and other people's to the activity of the company that you maintained, and all of them envoys within the labor schedule, you infected through two virus computer science” the system of the company. “They entered my personal archives”, counts Esther by telephone from Barcelona. “It had private electronic mails that my companions had sent me telling me very intimate things. It was a madness”, says. Esther went in opinion and won. The judge considered his dismissal like inadmissible. The sentence said that, in spite of the different doctrines that had been applied, the mail was protected by the secret of the communications. His case it was come off that the company wanted to dismiss it long before. “They wanted to Me outside. And the use of the computer was a simple excuse”, counts Esther. Working commissions assure that the case of Esther is not unique. “The illegal use of Internet on the part of the workers has become a pretext to justify dismissals more”, says Miquel Lóriz, that assures that an important step has occurred: to declare the secret electronic mail “although it is in computers of the company”. A few months ago, a civil servant of the General Administration of the S-state expedientado and was suspended to five days of use and pay to resend to his contacts an electronic mail animating to boycott the Catalan digging and other products. “The expedientado one, that was on the verge of retiring, finished learning to use the electronic mail and it was with the sanction without knowing very well how they had come to the light his personal post office”, a civil servant of the ministry explains to which she belonged. Since then their companions have much well-taken care of and so they send. “We suspected that they exist programs spies that they activate with certain words”, says another civil servant. From now on the electronic mails cannot be reviewed unless a suspicion exists of, for example, industrial espionage. And always under judicial mandate. But the rumors of monitoring, if they were certain, will have to become certainty. To the Supreme one, nevertheless, it has been him puntada without spinning. It is not clear what happens to the temporary files of Internet. The fingerprint that remains in the computer and that can get to reveal more of the life of which its own electronic mails. In the case of the dismissed employee of seeing pornographic in the work the sentence it assures that those archives enter “within the protection of the privacy”, since they can contain “sensible data” on the deprived life of the employee. “It will be necessary to wait for another sentence so that it is absolutely clear”, Sanchez Almeida says. For Bauzá, nevertheless, he is clarísimo: “They enter within which the industralist can review”. MARIA R. SAHUQUILLO (the extracted News of the Country)
 
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