Research On Civil Protection Of Employee Email Privacy

Due to thecharacteristics of convenient, fast, cheap, and can be largely accessed, email has become an integral communication tool of modern social life.In the business world, e-mail is becoming an effective communication bridge between employers and employees, employees and employees, employees and customers, employers and clients.But the widespread use of e-mail has led to the corresponding legal issues.In reality, some companies combine their interests in specific considerations, using a variety of more subtle means to monitor the use of emails by employees.In the enterprise, the employer usually enjoys a strong position, and there is no technical problem in monitoring the use of e-mails by employees.However, companies in the case of monitoring employees’ e-mail process, must also monitor private e-mails of some employees, the employees of these private e-mail is with privacy interests, which may have violated the privacy of employees.Therefore,the protection of privacy interests of electronic communications of employees faces serious challenges. On the legal protection of privacy of the employee, the United States and European civil law countries have developed their own representative legal systems.But in China, the relevant legislation on the protection of privacy of employees is not perfect. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the legal protection of the privacy of employees. Besidesthe introduction and conclusion of this paper, it is divided into four parts.The first part, introduce the overview of employee e-mail privacy. Theory can be used as the basis of employee e-mail privacy is compared and summarized, there are four main points: First, personality theory; second, intimate relations theory; and third, the right to be alone theory; fourth, self-information control theory. Then define the concept of employee e-mail privacy right. In the end, deconstruct the conflict between employee email privacy right and employer management right.The second part,from a comparative law perspective, this partintroduces the United States and European Continental countries legislation protecting the privacy interests of the employee e-mail. On the protection of the privacy of employees, there are two models: one is the American model; the other is European countries’ model. This part mainly introduces the relevant legislation of the United States and European countries, and on the basis of a comparative analysis of legislative ideas, legislative norms, and aspects of the coverage.The third part, based on china’s legislative and judicial practice, sorting the legal provisions on the protection of privacy of employee’s e-mail, on this basis, to reflect on the legal protection of employee privacy deficiencies: first, the connotation of privacy right is not clear; second, legislative fragmentation and the content is not comprehensive, the lack of systematic; and third, the right configuration is imperfect.The fourth part, through the introduction of foreign advanced legislative experience and analysis of the legal protection of privacy practice in china, this section presents the system design of employee e-mail privacy. This paper attempts to draw principles in EU Personal Information Protection Act, propose solutions to the problem of employee e-mail protection solutions within the existing legal framework, put forward some suggestions for the basic content of corporate e-mail policies. This paper argues that, in the absence of legislation expressly provides for the protection of privacy in the case of employee e-mail, we can introduce the principle of "reasonable expectation of privacy" in judicial practice, in order to solve the problem of defining the scope of protection because of the protection of privacy arising from employee e-mail.