alt Hacker NewsDoes GDPR (or similar) establish privacy rights to an employee’s use of a company-owned machine against snooping by their employer? Honest question, I hadn’t heard of that angle. Can employers not install EDR on company-owned machines for EU employees?
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It has to have a good purpose. Obviously there are a lot of words written about what constitutes a good purpose. Antivirus is probably one. Wanting to intimidate your employees is not. The same thing applies to security cameras.
Privacy laws are about the end-to-end process, not technical implementation. It's not "You can't MITM TLS" - it's more like "You can't spy on your employees". Blocking viruses is not spying on your employees. If you take the logs from the virus blocker and use them to spy on your employees, then you are spying on your employees. (Virus blockers aiming to be sold in the EU would do well not to keep unnecessary logs that could be used to spy on employees.)
Yes, at least in the Netherlands it is generally accepted that employees can use your device personally, too.
Using a device owned by your company to access your personal GMail account does NOT void your legal right to privacy.
They can, but the list of "if..." and "it depends..." is much longer and complicated, especially when getting to the part how the obtained information may be used
Yes. GDPR covers all handling of PII that a company does. And its sort of default deny, meaning that a company is not allowed to handle (process and/or store) your data UNLESS it has a reason that makes it legal. This is where it becomes more blurry: figuring out if the company has a valid reason. Some are simple, eg. if required by law => valid reason.
GDPR does not care how the data got “in the hands of” the company; the same rules apply. Another important thing is the pricipals of GDPR. They sort of unline everything. One principal to consider here is that of data minimization. This basically means that IF you have a valid reason to handle an individuals PII, you must limit the data points you handle to exactly what you need and not more.
So - company proxy breaking TLS and logging everything? Well, the company has valid reason to handle some employee data obviously. But if I use my work laptop to access privat health records, then that is very much outside the scope of what my company is allowed handle. And logging (storing) my health data without valid reason is not GDPR compliant.
Could the company fire me for doing private stuff on a work laptop? Yes probably. Does it matter in terms of GDPR? Nope.
Edit: Also, “automatic” or “implicit” consent is not valid. So the company cannot say something like “if you access private info on you work pc the you automatically content to $company handling your data”. All consent must be specific, explicit and retractable
(IANAL) I don't think there is a simple response to that, but I guess that given that the employer:
- has established a detailed policy about personal use of corporate devices
- makes a fair attempt to block work unrelated services (hotmail, gmail, netflix)
- ensures the security of the monitored data and deletes it after a reasonable period (such as 6–12 months)
- and uses it only to apply cybersecurity-related measures like virus detection, UNLESS there is a legitimate reason to target a particular employee (legal inquiry, misconduct, etc.)
I would say that it's very much doable.
Edit: More info from the Dutch regulator https://english.ncsc.nl/publications/factsheets/2019/juni/01...