Three recent court decisions make it important for companies to begin the new year with a thorough review of their computer-use policies with a focus on two issues: ensuring that employees have no expectation of privacy in using the company computer systems and delineating the scope of the employee’s permissible access to the company computers. This article will discuss these three decisions and their implications for creating effective corporate computer policies that protect the company against the theft of its data.
Two of these recent decisions — Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co. Inc., 529 F.3d 892 (9th Cir. 2008), cert. granted, 2009 WL 1146443 (2009), and Stengart v. Loving Care Agency Inc., 408 N.J. Super. 54 (N.J. App. Div. 2009) — affect a company’s ability to gather evidence from its own computers. Both cases found company computer policies insufficient to defeat the employee’s expectation of privacy in using the company computers for personal reasons. Whether an employee has an expectation of privacy on the company computers can become a critical issue when it is suspected that an employee may have stolen corporate data.
