[2117] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: SEC Rule Announcement
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John R Levine)
Fri Feb 6 15:08:33 1998
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 1998 15:02:28 -0500 (EST)
From: John R Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <v03007802b10113d4a56f@[168.161.105.216]>
> At 14:33 -0500 2/4/98, Jeffrey I. Schiller wrote:
> >Although I understand where the SEC is coming from, this looks like hugh
> >privacy violation. Do employers have the right to open employees private
> >paper mail (at home) and monitor personal phone calls (from home)?
The SEC rule says. among other things:
"For example, NASD Regulation would expect members to prohibit
correspondence with customers from employees' home computers or through
third party systems unless the firm is capable of monitoring such
communications."
It seems to me that a reasonable way to meet this requirement would be for
the firm to give the brokers e-mail accounts on their own server, and to
provide employees dial-up access to that server, so they send and receive
customer email through that server. It doesn't say that the firm has to
physically secure all employee-owned computers, it says they have to prohibit
unmonitored correspondence, where I understand "prohibit" to mean making it
one of the many administrative rules that brokers are required to follow. I
don't see the ECPA as being an issue here -- if employees don't consent to
monitoring of mail at home, hen the firm continues not to let them send or
receive business e-mail at home.
Like so many computer problems, this is an old problem in slightly new
clothes. Does anyone know whether a broker is allowed to telephone or fax
customers from home, and if so what the monitoring requirements are? I
suspect the rule is they flatly can't.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47
