Violation of Article 8 ECHR by courts in respect of employer monitoring (Bărbulescu v Romania)

Article summary

Employment analysis: The right to respect for private life and correspondence under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, of an employee dismissed for breach of a computer usage policy following monitoring of his communications at work, had been violated because the courts in Romania had failed to determine whether he had received prior notice from his employer of the possibility that his communications might be monitored and had not had regard either to the fact that he had not been informed of the nature or the extent of the monitoring, or the degree of intrusion into his private life and correspondence. In addition, the Romanian courts had failed to determine the specific reasons justifying the introduction of the monitoring measures, whether the employer could have used measures entailing less intrusion into his private life and correspondence, and whether the communications might have been accessed without his knowledge.