Potions That Turn You Into A Mermaid

The employer can access the computer at work, but not the email

The Third Section of the Provincial Court of Madrid has issued an order which supersede proceedings against a businessman who agreed to computer of one of its employees considering no crime of discovery and disclosure of secrets in his performance. The news has come out in the press, however, speaks of email access , but in the order in question does not say anything about access to email, but only to worker's computer, which which is quite different. Resolution court would be very innovative in that case, since without employee consent, or without having previously established conditions of use and control of business e-mail, you can not access email on the worker.


has on many occasions appealed to the analogy by which to apply the provisions of Article 18 of the Statute Workers (ET) for enterprise computing resources. Consequently, it could only be considered for registration when necessary "for the protection of business assets and the other workers company within the workplace and during working hours. In its full realization will respect the dignity and privacy of the worker and will be assisted by a legal representative of workers or in their absence from the workplace, another employee of the company, provided that this is possible. "

The order said it supports among others, the Judgement of the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court of September 26, 2007 , which is considered that the provisions of Article 18 is ET an exception to protect the privacy of the work, while the control of information technology does not fall within the exception, but is within the powers of direction and control of Article 20 ET. Consider the judge to " the computer is a protection tool that holds the employer as the owner or by another title and it has therefore powers of control over their use, including consideration of course." Thus, the employer can easily access the computer of the worker in the exercise of that power of control.

But we insist on what was said at the beginning, this is a case of access to the computer (at least so says the car) and not specifically to e-mail which itself may be restricted to access by the employer without first successfully established a policy for use by workers known as the mail address is being protected by the secrecy of communications (Article 18.3 of the Constitution).