The U.S. Supreme Court this week ruled that employers have the right to order IT to skim through text messages including personal messages sent by that organization's workers.

Supreme Court: OK For IT To Spy

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers have the right to order IT to skim through text messages (and that includes personal ones) sent by that organization's workers if they have reason to believe that workplace rules are being violated. So it's official, IT is now approved to spy on the rest of the workers. Oh Joy.

So now, when the question gets asked, "Do you know what your users are up to?" it may become part of your hat to say "Oh, yes". Sigh. You might be asked to rat out your co-workers when they are up to no good. You may have wondered if you owe your loyalty to your co-workers or the organization that employs you. The Supremes have answered that now.

The technical developments over the last 10 years have of course forced this decision. Ninety percent of corporate communication is via email. Voice and video are converging on IP-based networks, and IM traffic skyrockets both in corporate instant messaging and public IM. And this means that more and more corporate transgressions happen online. Sexual harassment via IM, leaks of trade secrets via email, child porn via FTP servers, and goofing off surfing the net while looking busy, you name it.

So now, often because of stricter laws and compliance needs, IT is now filtering the web and blocking sites, and scans e-mail and IM. And recently, this has expanded to monitoring what employees do on social networks and blogs, even when that employee uses their private home PC, in their own time. The very latest development is that employees' cell phone calls and text messages are stored, and if that is a company phone with GPS, well guess what... physical location gets tracked.

In our conversations with customers, the responses are mixed on this...

Courtesy WServer News.