Privacy Digest

Bosses' power to check email - Technology - smh.com.au - Via The Sydney Morning Herald. :

COMPANIES will be able to intercept the emails and internet communications of their employees without their consent under new laws being considered by the Federal Government to protect the nation's critical infrastructure from a cyber attack.

The proposed powers, which the Government wants in place by the middle of next year and which could affect millions of workers, have been slammed as an unprecedented and unjustifiable intrusion on civil liberties.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, acknowledges concerns but said the powers were a necessary bulwark against a growing threat to national security.

Mr McClelland told the Herald he had been advised that an attack to disable computer networks that sustained the financial system, stock exchange, electricity grid and transport system "would reap far greater economic damage than would be the case of a physical [terrorist] attack".

The Government is developing counter-measures, including amending the Telecommunications (Interceptions) Act to allow companies and others operating critical infrastructure to monitor emails and other internet communications without their workers' consent.

The act allows only security agencies to monitor their employees' communications without consent. That power expires at the end of June next year and Mr McClelland said he wanted the new legislation to include companies providing services critical to the economy.

"At least 90 per cent of networks exist outside government but there's no powers for corporate network supervisors to intercept such communications unless they have specific authority from the employee," he told the Herald.

"It's unquestionable that it's necessary from time to time for network supervisors to open emails addressed to people to identify viruses and the like …

"There needs to be protocols and guidelines developed so companies can protect their own networks.

"It will need new legislation."

(Read Original Article - Via The Sydney Morning Herald..)