Re: Confidentiality notices on email messages

Randall Gellens wrote:
> Barry,
>
> I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV or the net, so I likely 
> don't understand the situation.  As a point of possibly interesting 
> information, once upon a time, at a training session held by a lawyer 
> regarding how to protect confidential information, we were admonished 
> not to slap a "confidential" label on anything automatically or without 
> consideration, because, we were warned, doing so can cause the label to 
> lose meaning for everything.  In other words, if we labelled everything 
> "confidential," then we were really saying nothing was confidential.
> Ever since, I've wondered if these notices were set up by someone who is 
> a lawyer and does understand the situation, or if they were set up by 
> someone who saw others do it, or heard that this sort of thing was needed.
Depending on the organization, it may be a legally required especially 
if it is public stock company.  It is also legally required to make an 
explicit statement in order to have stronger enforcement when push 
comes to shove, i.e. ignorance can not be claimed.   There is also a 
difference in PUBLIC vs PRIVATE communications and while it is more 
important to have disclaimers when public, unless an explicit 
statement is also made in private, it can not be assumed.  A good 
example is a private message send to someone and he/she makes it 
public. In tort cases, the receiver has to right to make it public if 
and only if the author did not make an explicit statement that it 
remains private and the guideline is to make it the very first 
statement:  THIS IS A PRIVATE MESSAGE AND THE INTENTION IS THAT IT 
REMAINS PRIVATE. MAKING THIS MESSAGE PUBLIC WILL VIOLATE US EPCA "User 
Privacy Expectation" PROVISIONS.
IMV, the IETF will be opening up a can of worms if they begin to cite 
legal conflicts with the NOTE WELL statement and if its suggested that 
participants use external addresses in order to participate without 
conflict, well, even if people took the advice, it may put the person 
in some legal conflict with his corporate employer. e.g.  just because 
a person moonlights in some other activity, does not necessary mean 
they are free from company employment contracts and if there is any 
kind of relationship of his external activities with his normal work, 
they might want him to use a corporate identity or not. I guess it all 
depends how much of a hard ass is his boss, employer or their chief 
counsel.  You might find if the IETF is making a fuss, they may ask 
the employee to just not participate - lurk, but don't post.
--
Hector Santos, CTO
http://www.santronics.com
http://santronics.blogspot.com



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