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Comment by spelunker | Hacker News Reader

> I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy.

So you and your choosy developer friends work at a place where IT can't access your corporate email?

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In Germany (and probably the whole EU) it's illegal for an employer to read an employee's mails without approval of the workers' council for each individual case.

"probably the whole EU" [citation-needed]. German privacy law is very strict. This might be a good thing, don't get me wrong - but extrapolating this to all the other 27 member states is pure nonsense.

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that an employee's communication may not be monitored without prior notice and without specific reasons. [1]

This ruling applies not only to the whole EU, but to the 47 member states of the Council of European, including for example Russia and Turkey.

[1] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-m...

I'm aware of this, yet "prior notice + specific reasons" != "approval of the workers' council for each individual case"

Requiring approval of the worker's council is how an employer's demand to read an employee's mail is usually handled in Germany. I did not mean to imply that it is handled the same way in the whole EU, just that unsubstantiated monitoring is likely illegal in the whole EU.

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