Consumer Watch: Give Without Getting Taken

Privacy Watch: Should Your Boss Be Allowed to Search Your Hard Drive?

Let's admit that no one spends every minute at the office on business. If you're like a lot of people, your hard drive may contain a few downloaded MP3s, some saved CD-ROM games, a spreadsheet for the office football pool, or perhaps even a cover letter to a potential new employer. The company you work for owns the computer you use--but does that give your boss the right to search your hard drive?

It's a tricky question, whether you're a worker bee or a boss. But many companies would answer yes. And many supervisors feel free to search an employee's hard drive without warning. A case in point at the New York Times Company: A supervisor discovered an envelope containing potentially offensive material, and managers decided to scan the hard drives of every member of the department from which they suspected the papers came.

The affected employees were given no warning that management was about to scan their hard drives. When the scans turned up dirty jokes in e-mails, pornographic pictures, and other unsavory personal files, management fired 10 percent of the employees whose drives they inspected and reprimanded others.

Conventional legal wisdom holds that the Times acted within its rights: Employees can't expect to keep private any material they put on a company-owned computer. But in a recent paper, federal judge James M. Rosenbaum questions that conventional wisdom. "Just as an employee does not surrender all privacy rights on the company's premises," he argues, "so they should not be automatically surrendered on the company's computer."

Rosenbaum recommends that businesses be required to warn workers before they scan their hard drives, to specify exactly what they're looking for, and to give the employees a chance to respond while the hard drive is quarantined, but before it is searched. That arrangement would be a huge step forward. In the meantime, don't assume that anything you put on your office computer is for your eyes only.

--Andrew Brandt