Today the Italian Data Protection Authority issued an official position re: (internet) workplace privacy protection. The bottom line is: employers cannot control how do employees use the Internet during working hours, providing a few exemption to this general “block”. They are simply wrong and tell just the half of the story. Italian courts (including Corte di cassazione – the Supreme Court), indeed, ruled in favour of a more flexible approach when the employer must investigate misbehaviours or crimes. But the data protection people seems not to be aware of it.
What is worse is that to protect employees’ privacy, the Authority is strongly advocacing for preemptive web filtering and content blocking.
That’s a brilliant trade-off: privacy for censorship… and chicks for free!