Permitted Private Use Of Workplace Recourses – Accessing Private Messages Of Employees

In the case at hand, the employer terminated the employment of one of his employees after obtaining information from a concealed investigation into private conversations conducted by the employee via the e-mail service and smartphone provided by the employer.

In the following litigation the Regional Labour Court Baden-Württemberg found that the termination was invalid because the information obtained constituted inadmissible evidence:

Because of the permitted private use, the employer would have needed to inform the employee before accessing any data within the communication system provided, so that private messages could be stored by the employee outside of accessible folders. The unannounced access constitutes a violation of the employee's constitutional rights, e.g. right to privacy and informational self-determination. This results in the processing of the data being unjustified and thus illegal, according to Sec. 26 (1) of the German Federal Data Protection