Re: [SAGE] Canadian law regarding personal accounts of terminated employees?

[Peter Van Epp <vanepp@sfu.ca>]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 10:25:09PM -0400, Andrew G. Hammond wrote:
> Hi, I'm sure this question has been asked numerous times, but I haven't 
> been able to find an answer. What is the law as it applies to personal 
> email accounts of former employees? For example:

	To get a valid current answer you would need to consult a lawyer. When 
we did so (in Canada) 10 or 12 years ago now, the advise at that time was that 
the owner of the machine (the University in our case) owns the data and can do 
with it what they please. Now, we have internal policy which governs what will 
and won't be done and with what authorization (which I assume, but don't know, 
has been vetted by the lawyers after the consultation that I know of). Also 
since that time FOIP legislation has been passed (and applied to government 
bodies such as us years ago). I believe the commercial world equivelent is 
about to become law on Jan 1 next year (but it could have been Jan 1 this 
year, since it doesn't affect us I didn't pay a lot of attention :-)).

Peter Van Epp / Operations and Technical Support 
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. Canada