[Mimedefang] action_bounce - forget it!

[Lee Dilkie]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> [mailto:mimedefang-bounces at lists.roaringpenguin.com]On Behalf Of David
> F. Skoll
> Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 11:21 AM
> To: mimedefang at lists.roaringpenguin.com
> Subject: Re: [Mimedefang] action_bounce - forget it!
...
> I can't believe that law would apply to private companies or, in fact,
> to anyone other than ISPs or service providers.  Surely a private
> organization can do whatever it likes with its e-mail.
>

Don't confuse the notion of "private" as it applies in different countries.

Our concept of a private company and the rights it has are very different
from those in other countries. Heck, even between the US and Canada, the
laws can be quite different. But many european countries have very strong
labour laws and those can limit what lengths a company can go to when
interfering with a worker rights.

I remember a case in the 80's when we had a problem with one of our networks
in germany (x.25 packet switching product). The network would occasionally
go into a cascade failure and the customer (DBP as I recall) was very upset.
We suspected that the cause was do to operator sabotage and so we asked for
console logging to be turned on. It turned out that companies are not
allowed to monitor their employees to that extent, it was against the law.
Even enabling logs to simply track network configuration commands was not
allowed. Eventually DBP did catch the offender but through other means.

Contrast this with the US, where a company can pretty much do whatever it
wants with it's equipment and it's employees. A "private" company can
legally do all sorts of things that the goverment is not permitted to do.

-lee