Microsoft reads through employee's Hotmail account

 So this might be a bit controversial.. 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57620681-83/microsoft-defends-opening-hotmail-account-of-blogger-in-espionage-case/ 

Synopsis: Microsoft realized upon significant legal investigation that one of its employees was independently selling activation keys to Microsoft software. At that point, Microsoft decided to examine his other “Microsoft operated accounts”, in this case his hotmail account, for more information. Apparently the terms of service which everyone consents to before creating a Hotmail account expressly outline permission for Microsoft to do so, but it happens very rarely and only in “exceptional circumstances”.

Thoughts: 

In my paper I’m going to be focusing on employee rights to privacy, which might explain why I find this article very interesting.

The article and the justification given by Microsoft for its actions are both fairly straightforward. My main question when I read this article was that the justification Microsoft gave actually carries two implicit premises: (a) that consent being given by the individual as Hotmail user permits this action and seems to negate any claim to a violation of privacy, and (b) in cases where personal information or correspondence might be revealing of a crime against the organization itself, what might have been considered personal and private employee information loses its protected status.

While I’m not certain whether the latter premise would hold up according to Canadian jurisprudence, the former is what provoked me to post this article. In tort law it’s clear that merely signing away consent to the possibility of personal injury does not necessarily waive a cause of action against the injuring party. In the case of Terms of Agreement policies, wouldn’t this same rationality? Granted this isn’t a case of personal injury so this line of reasoning might be precluded for privacy reasons, but if we could set that aside for a moment.. It is widely acknowledged that Terms of Agreements are rarely read, nevermind understood. Therefore, I wonder if the Terms of Agreement is even relevant to this invasion of employee privacy or if it would be less misleading for companies such as Microsoft to simply explicitly admit that they intend to violate employee privacy that goes beyond workplace activity when the company’s own interests are at stake.