reate opportunities for play or even danger. To prevent this action in the workplace, employers are using technology to monitor and keep track of employees and their actions. The level of surveillance being practiced by employers is unprecedented. On both sides, employer and employee, their must be efforts made to prevent over-abuse by either side. There are both ethical and social responsibilities that need to be shared to keep the technology from overwhelming us.I hope that I have shown that the current law in this area is inadequate and needs to be reviewed. The current law in this area, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, does not satisfactorily address the many problems in connection with abuse of e-mail systems by employees or abuse of privacy issues by employers. The Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has commented that the ECPA is simply not clear and is too broad to be effective. One of the main reasons for this is that the ECPA is simply an amended version of the 1968 federal wiretap law which was originally adopted to deal with telephone eavesdropping. Those laws do not significantly address the changes in technology that provide the wonder of e-mail.With the current legislation being ambiguous, and no new legislation yet passed, the next best solution is encouraging employers to implement a clear e-mail policy. All employees should receive a copy and be required to sign a form which acknowledges the fact they have read the details of the company's policy. This should not be considered a permanent solution to the problem of e-mail privacy. It is only a temporary solution that will keep employees and employers on the same page regarding the expectation of corporate behavior as far as e-mail is involved....
