Email Privacy at work or play?

Taken from:
Network World, 12/27/04 (no doubt, copied & pasted without permission)

"The blurring of personal and business e-mail is a serious problem at companies today, says Mich Kabay, associate professor for information assurance at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., and author of the "Network World on Security" newsletter. "Any e-mail message that is written on a corporate account should be considered written on company letterhead," he says. "It should not be taken lightly." "

I say: BULL*HIT

The problem is niether serious and letterhead is just that, the HEAD OF THE LETTER, not an email introduction - not the same thing. The only exception to my exception is when you are sending email correspondence to customers or vendors OUTSIDE your company "walls".

If you are ALLOWED the PRIVELEDGE to send private emails to and from each other in or out of work between family, friends, or co-workers, then you have a RIGHT to your privacy to ALL TYPES OF EMAILS.

All you need to do is sign yourself up for a digital certificate. Most will plugin to all the popular and even some of the not-so-popular (read: propriatary) email systems and will not harm their proper operation.

At the very least, if it is assumed that the emails moving around a network at work are private and internal, then they, too, should be protected with a cert.

There can be no argument against this policy, given my opening rebuttal.

Kosuth's argument for early destruction of emails and having to protect an archive is aggregious thinking. You migh have to keep certain types of documents for up to 10 years if attached to emails, so you might as well save them. Besides that, it is more likely to want to have your archive to protect you in defense o aclaim rather than just to delay discovery purposes. If an FBI investigation needs old "deleted" info back, they can get it - with current technology, data forensics can now uncover thrashed data to upward of 50 times rubbed-out - most of us have probably seen that episode of CSI!