Australian privacy watchdog refuses to investigate employer that allegedly accessed worker’s personal emails

'Madzikanda had used his work laptop for personal activity, including saving his passwords for online banking, emailing from his personal account and accessing his online cloud storage.'

Work device, work stuff

Personal device, personal stuff

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Shayano Madzikanda was suspended from his job at the mining industry company Mecrus in June 2019 and was ordered to surrender his work laptop.

In a complaint to the information commissioner made in 2019, he alleged that his iCloud and personal email accounts had been accessed by his employer.

But Madzikanda claimed his employer could only have known that by reading the contents of his personal emails and accessing information from his iCloud account.

Separately, he settled with his employer through the Fair Work Commission, including a provision that his personal property be returned.

The company denied it had used personal information saved on the laptop to access his online accounts, and provided IT policies dating back to 2013.

David Vaile, the privacy and surveillance stream lead at the University of New South Wales’s Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation, said: “The judgment is [unhelpful] for settling the law on this point – a consequence of the fact that a victim can’t directly litigate their legal claim, and that, as the court confirms, at present Australians still thus don’t have a ‘right’ to privacy, only a right to complain to a regulator who can, as this judgment confirms, take advantage of a wide range of justifications to do nothing if they feel like it with minimal court oversight.”

The original article contains 768 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

These companies dig up everything from a prospective employee's past, starting from childhood. Things that you said come back to bite you, even if you got wiser and changed your stance. But companies get to pull shit like this without consequences.

There should be a public blacklist database with every company and their dirty infractions like these. That way, at least very competent and desirable candidates can avoid them and look for better jobs.

Bad but not surprising. Unlike many other privacy laws, Australia’s has an exception for employer access https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/your-privacy-rights/more-privacy-rights/employment#

Easy solution, stop using company property for personal things.