Australian Bosses will legally Read Staff Email

I was wondering what sort of effect this legislation might have on financial services. Many people choose to log on to their internet banking, and do other more security sensititve tasks online, while they are at work because they perceive their work connection as safer (and they may want to hide the Christmas club account from the Mrs). Will this lead to more phishing and trojans or more useless anti-virus sales?

Of course, I can't imagine that an employee's private details would be of much use to employers in wage negotiations, but it might put a few off it means having their personal finances open to the boss.

Maybe those private emails from your broker should go to the home email.

The next thought I had was if the government gives permission for 'terrorism reasons' it would be totally ineffective unless they actually forced bosses to do it. That's probably in the fine print. Ultimately doesn't it come down to every keystroke employees make because anything could be part of a communication?

I don't see any real benefits here because there are quite a few lesser known ways to communicate without the boss knowing or using email, so any really determined 'terrorist' in your midst would be a step ahead.  Recording all phone calls and SMS would have to be next. SMS is a message just like an email, and you can even SMS-to-email directly.

Every call recorded and SMS on your work mobile. It's a lot for the boss to read. I suppose the government will offer to help. I'm keen to help too, are there any bank's who would like me to read their employee's email, I promise I'll ignore all the easy money from the inside tips and I won't mention any on my blog - for a fee. There'll be a lot of billable hours in this. You'll have to sack your more talkative employees on account of the cost of bugging them.

Where does it stop?