Workplace privacy disputes are becoming more common every day, as employees post their grievances on blogs, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and as employers increase monitoring of e-mail and Internet activity. For example, the recent Domino’s Pizza debacle involving employees’ suggestions of food tampering and the responsive posting from Domino’s CEO on YouTube to bolster customer confidence exemplifies the ease by which workplace disputes play out publicly. 

To avoid any suggestion that the monitoring interferes with the employee’s “reasonable expectation of privacy,” employers should establish formal Internet, E-mail Use and Workplace Surveillance policies and notify workers of those policies.  Courts generally recognize that an employer may access e-mail stored on its own system for business purposes, especially after warning employees that their computer usage is being monitored. Constant reminders, through techniques such as splash screen notices, make a significant difference in litigation.  
 
Caution: Monitoring employees’ email and Internet connections may impose a duty on the employer to take action against an employee viewing child pornography by terminating his or her employment and/or informing law enforcement. 
 
Employers still can be liable for accessing employees’ personal e-mail accounts, however, as the Fourth Circuit recently emphasized in Van Alstyne v. Electronic Scriptorium Limited, when the employer gives de facto permission for employees to use their office computers for personal reasons.