Finland: the government is thinking about a bill allowing employers to check their employees’ emails

The government sparked off a vivid debate with a draft amendment for the law on the protection of electronic data, which would allow employers to check the addresses of the emails received by and sent to their employees, to see the type of files attached to the message, without having access to the content. (Ref. 080381)
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The government’s bill, which aims at protecting trade secrets, would nonetheless not prevent employees from getting information on the internet or paying their bills with their online bank, which is common practice in Finland.

Lex Nokia. The government’s bill was called Lex Nokia because it seems that it has been decided in 2006, after the Finnish giant Haavisto announced that Nokia had illegally checked its employees’ emails between 2000 and 2001. The prosecutor had clearly ruled that this prac

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