Company and worker back to back with email control (problematic)
In the workplace, the business possibility of controlling employees' email has been the subject of great controversy. Article 18.3 of the Constitution enshrines the secrecy of communications as a Fundamental Right, which made corporate interference complex or, at the very least, debatable.
After different cases and their corresponding sentences, the peaceful doctrine established by the Supreme Court, Social Chamber, was reached, according to which, the company, as long as it issues a clear and precise instruction on the nature of work or status of work tool of the email, I could monitor it. This clear and distinct warning, in Cartesian language, meant that the mail was no longer an element of private communication.
This peaceful criterion has been put into discussion again by the ruling of June 16, 2014, of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court itself, although limited, at least for the moment, to the criminal sphere.
According to this ruling, so that evidentiary value and effectiveness can be given to the result of the evidence relating to the intervention of communications protected by the law of art. 18.3 of the EC (which guarantees its secrecy, specifically and in this case the intervention of a worker's email, the corresponding authorization and judicial intervention is always necessary. Therefore, it is understood that the criteria that have been established in previous rulings of the TS and the TC must be restricted to the scope of the Labor Jurisdiction and it is not appropriate, in any way, for them to extend to the criminal field.
Understands that using arguments relating to the ownership or ownership of the computer and email account, the use of these resources during the working day, or the corporate nature of the channel used, do not represent an exception to the essential and necessary jurisdictional reservation in authorization for this interference.
He also alleges that an alleged "tacit waiver" of the right does not validate the absence of judicial authorization, because the Constitution does not provide, due to the logical impossibility of doing so, the authorization of the interested party himself as an argument that allows the intervention of the mail.
This strict protection regime in which the Judge intervenes as guardian of the rights of the investigated, finds its logic in the seriousness of this type of interference since they reveal all kinds of aspects related to the privacy of the communicator, both those of interest to the investigation, as well as others completely unrelated to that legitimate interest, since even if the person under investigation is an employee of a company, the incursion into his communications automatically and immediately produces interference in the corresponding right to secrecy of the third parties who communicate with him, unrelated to that relationship with the owner of the tool and its conditions of use, also producing a situation of absolute defenselessness, because the person investigated does not know that their communications are being intercepted.
Finally, this applies only with respect to what strictly constitutes this "communications secrecy", that is, excluding the so-called "traffic data" or even the possible use of computer equipment to access other services of the network such as web pages, etc., of messages that, once received and opened by their recipient, no longer form part of the communication itself, with respect to which different rules govern such as those relating to data protection and conservation ( art. 18.4 CE) or to documentary privacy in a generic sense and without the absolute requirement of judicial intervention (art. 18.1 CE)
Fountain: www.expansion.com