The Supreme Court has found that employers may not routinely check on what their employees are doing on a company computer assigned to the individual. The ruling stands to throw many company practices into confusion. In deciding the matter, the court said that workplace computers contain so much personal information that employees have a legitimate expectation of privacy in using them. It specified that the surfing history of employees should be confidential. The court did say, however, that some matters were so serious that the right to privacy might be overruled. But it did not explain how such criminal matters might be detected when the employer cannot routinely oversee activity on its own computers. The case involved a high school teacher who had nude pictures of students on his computer. In this case, the court said, the pictures, which had been discovered by a technician during maintenance, may be used as evidence against the teacher.
