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Comment by sigmoid10 | Hacker News Reader

GDPR guarantees a right to privacy even on work devices. I think you need to filter out personal messages if compliance requires logging.

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It provides a right to privacy if the company allows personal messaging services on the device, but I don't think it provides a right to having personal messaging apps on the device(s).

Personally I think it's much cleaner to keep work stuff on your work device(s) and personal stuff on personal devices. The only place that gets sticky is where companies don't provide the device but want you to have work information on it (e.g. mobile phones)

It is a right in EU to have some level of personal activity on work-supplied devices. This does not come from the GDPR but some other legislation. We had a call with HR about that only recently when some leader again suggested "just block xyz on work devices".

And if you don't want to use BYOD we are required to supply a phone if we require employees to use one (which we do, for MFA).

The leadership can block anything they want on a work-supplied device. They might get the Works Councils on board but generally they can.

However they can not reduce private social life to zero at work [1]. And there the employees are guaranteed privacy. NB: This was pre GDPR.

This however does not go so far, that people must be allowed private chatting apps on work phones. They can and should use their private phones.

[1]https://www.jacksonboyd.co.uk/barbulescu-v-romania-work-rela...

As much as I prefer the European way of some items. I think the American way of treating the work computer as a company asset and just locking it down to an insane degree makes way more sense. Especially for areas like finance.

Exactly this.

I've been in a lawsuit with Oracle (as engineer, not direct). And their discovery hit EVERYTHING.

If I used work devices for personal messages, my personal messages would absolutely been in scope.

Or if I used personal devices for work, my personal devices are now in scope. Hell NO!

My work laptop is on my personal network. Its also on its own vlan and can only talk to the imternet, and not fellow devices. And I can attest to that as much if I'm ever called in for a discovery hearing.

I have my work items on a separate network as well but my motivation is more not trusting some random item being pushed down from corp and having it scan my network or something.

Yeah I'm about to do this too just to be safe.

Some of our antimalware like SentinelOne actually does this by default though we have switched it off for privacy reasons (EU)

The things you can see in S1 Deep Observability is insane.

Discovery doesn't work like that in Europe though. It's not nearly as all-encompassing. And personal messages definitely would not be in scope. I think this is one of the reasons there is so much difference in strategy.

When we get requests to "legal hold" an account for discovery, this is always coming from the US.

That is more of a problem with the insane discovery system in the US than with anything else. If you had worked in Europe, GDPR would have protected your personal data from being sent over, as the Credit Suisse case has shown. They had to scrub all personal data before transferring files to a US counsel.

> Or if I used personal devices for work, my personal devices are now in scope. Hell NO!

In Europe, unless it's a criminal investigation, which this wouldn't be, there is no way a lawsuit would touch your personal devices if you didn't agree (and mostly also nobody would care I think).

Not to forget many constitutions enshrining privacy of correspondence which extends to emails and instant messages. Lot of work done to poke holes on it but generally it still holds somewhat in many countries.

Which is actually a good reason for entities subject to GDPR to forbid use of personal messaging apps on work devices... (And to forbid users to use work / official apps for personal messaging.)

That sounds like a simple solution but it is not that simple, employees have a right to use work tools for personal reasons too within reason.

And GDPR explicitly forbids personal items to be released during discovery even to jurisdictions that require that.

When all the "simple solutions" are "not that simple," maybe it's a problem with the regulations, not the solutions...

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