Why information privacy and the employment relationship don't mix: Workplace e-mail and Internet monitoring in the United Kingdom and Canada

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis is a comparative study of the law relating to workplace e-mail and internet monitoring in the United Kingdom and Canada. The thesis begins by considering why information privacy is important and how it applies to the workplace. Chapters two and three analyse the law in the United Kingdom and Canada, which is shown to be incoherent and contradictory. Chapter four examines how concepts central to the definition of privacy are deliberately being applied to the employment relationship in such a way as to result in contracting-out of the right of privacy, so failing to treat information privacy as a constraint on freedom of contract. Proportionality is proposed as a preferable way of reconciling employee rights with employer interests. In the concluding chapter it is suggested that the reluctance to recognise information privacy rights in employment is due to the fact that privacy protection involves a direct interference with management prerogative.LL.M