U.S. court rules against employee computer privacy rights

By Julia Cheever, Bay City News Service

August 8, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled today that workers have no legal expectation of privacy on their office computers when their employer has an announced policy of monitoring computers.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision in the case of a Montana man, Jeffrey Ziegler, who was prosecuted in federal court for receiving child pornography images on his office computer.

The images were found after representatives of Ziegler's employer, Frontline Processing of Bozeman, Mont., gave the FBI copies of a hard drive from his computer in 2001.

The company had an announced policy that it could monitor computers and that employees shouldn't use their office computers for private purposes.

Ziegler argued unsuccessfully that the evidence from his computer should not be allowed in court because the FBI obtained it without a search warrant.

But a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled that workers have no legitimate expectation of privacy when their employer has a policy that computer usage can be monitored.

The federal court based its ruling partly on the reasoning of a similar decision by a California appeals court in Los Angeles in 2002.

The California court said that current social norms support a doctrine that an employer's policy of monitoring computers can overcome any expectation of privacy.

Federal Circuit Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote, "We think the California court's reasoning is compelling."

O'Scannlain continued, "Social norms suggest that employees are not entitled to privacy in the use of workplace computers, which belong to their employers and pose significant dangers in terms of diminished productivity and even employer liability."

In the Montana case, Ziegler pleaded guilty in 2004 to a charge of receiving obscene materials, but retained the right to appeal the issue of whether the evidence should be suppressed. He was sentenced to probation and fined $1,000.

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