Bit of Legal Advice re emails
Discussion
What is the legal stand point regarding reading other people's emails? I've been chatting to a friend who is involved in a rather nasty dispute with former collegues/people he worked with.
The situation is: he directed a film with a producer which went rather badly, and the investor got burnt. Despite the problems they moved on to their next production and brought in a second co producer, who also brought in another project. To cut a long story short month or two later the two producers are acting increasingly suspiciously, secret meetings, and frequent abscences from the office. Now the three of them are operating out of my friend's office, using all his equipment, laptops and computers. They assure him that nothing is going on and that all the jobs are still on. All in the meantime there are problems with the investor of the previous job. Teh dispute was that he wanted the producer sacked and my friend defended him, causing the fall out.
Now the company cheque book goes missing and upon finding it, my friend finds that some cheques have been removed from it and money has been paid to the two producers. They say that had to do it to cover expenses as he was away at the time. He is the only signatory on the account.
The producer is complaining that the laptop which the internet goes through is running slowly, so my friend asks me to come in and asks me to look at the computers. Turns out that the producer has put a password on my friends laptop. As I had previously done work on it and the producer had told me the password I went into the machine and checked it all for viurses. Turns out the the producer has installed his own email settings on to the computer. My friend asks if there is anyway to get the emails off the computer as he believes they are trying to stitch him up. I say yes and give him the files from the documents and settings folder.
After putting them through a reader he finds that they are indeed trying to screw him and are also planning to try and bring his company into ruin so they can pick up the pieces cheap. Two days later he asks for the producer's key. Teh guy comes in, steals the laptop and disappears, giving a new office address and says the will return the laptop when he sees fit. He returns it after 2 weeks only when threatened by the police.
Now there is a lot of legal stuff going on, such as fraud charges and other parties trying to sue this producer, but my questions are:
Where does my friend stand with reading the emails? Given that they were on his computer, in his office and in a computer account that was set up for his company? Also he never gave permission for the producer to put his own emails onto the laptop.
Can he use them in any court case? Or as evidence in any proiceedings?
More importantly, where do I stand with taking the files off the laptop and giving him the emails and prog to read them. I most certainly don't want to be in any sort of trouble, as my friend is now being accused of hacking email accounts etc.
As all this is of a sensitive nature I have started a new account, I'm sure Ted won't mind, but I am a regular poster.
Cheers
The situation is: he directed a film with a producer which went rather badly, and the investor got burnt. Despite the problems they moved on to their next production and brought in a second co producer, who also brought in another project. To cut a long story short month or two later the two producers are acting increasingly suspiciously, secret meetings, and frequent abscences from the office. Now the three of them are operating out of my friend's office, using all his equipment, laptops and computers. They assure him that nothing is going on and that all the jobs are still on. All in the meantime there are problems with the investor of the previous job. Teh dispute was that he wanted the producer sacked and my friend defended him, causing the fall out.
Now the company cheque book goes missing and upon finding it, my friend finds that some cheques have been removed from it and money has been paid to the two producers. They say that had to do it to cover expenses as he was away at the time. He is the only signatory on the account.
The producer is complaining that the laptop which the internet goes through is running slowly, so my friend asks me to come in and asks me to look at the computers. Turns out that the producer has put a password on my friends laptop. As I had previously done work on it and the producer had told me the password I went into the machine and checked it all for viurses. Turns out the the producer has installed his own email settings on to the computer. My friend asks if there is anyway to get the emails off the computer as he believes they are trying to stitch him up. I say yes and give him the files from the documents and settings folder.
After putting them through a reader he finds that they are indeed trying to screw him and are also planning to try and bring his company into ruin so they can pick up the pieces cheap. Two days later he asks for the producer's key. Teh guy comes in, steals the laptop and disappears, giving a new office address and says the will return the laptop when he sees fit. He returns it after 2 weeks only when threatened by the police.
Now there is a lot of legal stuff going on, such as fraud charges and other parties trying to sue this producer, but my questions are:
Where does my friend stand with reading the emails? Given that they were on his computer, in his office and in a computer account that was set up for his company? Also he never gave permission for the producer to put his own emails onto the laptop.
Can he use them in any court case? Or as evidence in any proiceedings?
More importantly, where do I stand with taking the files off the laptop and giving him the emails and prog to read them. I most certainly don't want to be in any sort of trouble, as my friend is now being accused of hacking email accounts etc.
As all this is of a sensitive nature I have started a new account, I'm sure Ted won't mind, but I am a regular poster.
Cheers
hmm.....thiat could all get very nasty.
[assume am talking to company owner her rather than you]
AFAIK (and it can be quite technical in interpretation)...your company, therefore you have the right to see anything written in company time and/or using company equipment. As it was also YOUR laptop, and he didnt even ask to do what he did I would suggest that you have every right o all files on that machine - his or otherwise. I assume they can also be used in court...cant see why not?
reason it can be technical is that you may have to have a corporate policy such as "all this stuff is ours to look at when we want"
might be best to move to SP&L for advice from the ever knowledgeable Dwight van Driver
[assume am talking to company owner her rather than you]
AFAIK (and it can be quite technical in interpretation)...your company, therefore you have the right to see anything written in company time and/or using company equipment. As it was also YOUR laptop, and he didnt even ask to do what he did I would suggest that you have every right o all files on that machine - his or otherwise. I assume they can also be used in court...cant see why not?
reason it can be technical is that you may have to have a corporate policy such as "all this stuff is ours to look at when we want"
might be best to move to SP&L for advice from the ever knowledgeable Dwight van Driver
nightmare said:
might be best to move to SP&L for advice from the ever knowledgeable Dwight van Driver
Second the SP&L bit, I sense a legal minfield ahead. But, if the laptop is owned by you or your friend (or his/your company) and is used by a 3rd party then the laptop and all it's contents remain your property. That's usually the way work issued equipment is dealt with.
If it involved accessing an online account or sniffing network traffic it would have been dodgy, but since it involved emails already downloaded I think you should be in the clear from a criminal perspective. The Computer Misuse Act talks about "unauthorised access", but if the computer was owned by the company then being instructed by a director (who was certainly authorised to access it) made you authorised. It's up to the lawyers to argue whether they are admissable, if they argue hard you might be a witness as to how they were collected.
Gareth
Gareth
IANAL and all that, but as he is using company equipment, the company has the right and/or obligation to monitor the data he puts on it to ensure that he does not break the law, access or create illegal images etc. He has no right to assume that anything he puts on a company PC is private to him as an individual.
Normally that would be written into contracts, but in this case I'm guessing not. I'd still assume that there's no law that gives him right to privacy on company equipment. Of course it depends on what you want to do with the information. If he doesn't know that your friend has concrete details of what he's up to, then your friend might want to use the advantage to sabotage his plans. If on the other hand your friend wants to use the data as evidence in legal proceedings, you'd need to take professional advice as I'm not sure what status emails have - besides the means that you came into posession of them, you would also have to consider if a bunch of files in your posession constitute proof that he ever had those emails.
Normally that would be written into contracts, but in this case I'm guessing not. I'd still assume that there's no law that gives him right to privacy on company equipment. Of course it depends on what you want to do with the information. If he doesn't know that your friend has concrete details of what he's up to, then your friend might want to use the advantage to sabotage his plans. If on the other hand your friend wants to use the data as evidence in legal proceedings, you'd need to take professional advice as I'm not sure what status emails have - besides the means that you came into posession of them, you would also have to consider if a bunch of files in your posession constitute proof that he ever had those emails.
As long as the laptop and any equipment involved belongs to the business then the business can do as it sees fit with the information as all data on a company laptop belongs to the company.
I wouldn't know if emails can be used as evidence, although from a techies point of view they don't mean a great deal as they are far to easy to fake or tamper with.
I wouldn't know if emails can be used as evidence, although from a techies point of view they don't mean a great deal as they are far to easy to fake or tamper with.
Doesn't the good old Data Protection Act come into this somewhere? We had to change the wording in the contracts at my last gaff to give us special permission to access someones email account - whether its work supplied computer or not, email accounts, even if business ones, are considered personal and come under the guise of the Act?
Stephanie Plum said:
Doesn't the good old Data Protection Act come into this somewhere? We had to change the wording in the contracts at my last gaff to give us special permission to access someones email account - whether its work supplied computer or not, email accounts, even if business ones, are considered personal and come under the guise of the Act?
I'm fairly sure they don't. The data protection act doesn't apply in this situation as far as I am aware as the data is owned by the business.
A business email account isn't classed as personal data as it is a business tool, a lot of companies have a computer policy which states that users must not use the account for personal reasons.
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