In the last thirty years we have witnessed the coming of the computer age and a renaissance of communication. The role of the computer is vital to the everyday workings of modern society and has had a profound effect in the corporate world facilitating communication. It has given businesses the ability to manage their communications more efficiently and increasing, through better communication, employee productivity immensely. Electronic mail, or as most popularly known as Email, in itself has increased the usage of computers by becoming one of the most heavily used applications residing in corporate information systems. Within this renaissance has arisen concerns of how we properly use this new form of communication and learn new mores to adapt to this technological culture. Communication in the past relied heavily on verbal interfacing. With the use of email in the office skyrocketing in the last five years, the electronic media is a critical piece of the organization's communication structure. According to recent statistics, 90 percent of large companies, 64 percent of midsize companies, and 42 percent of small businesses use email. This results in almost 3 billion messages transmitted every month, which has increased from 508 million per month in 1994. The reasons for this increase are clear. Email communication improves productivity in the workplace because of the speed and responsiveness with which communications take place. Instead of trying to communicate through meetings or phone calls, employees can now simply communicate their ideas through email quickly and efficiently. Email is becoming another form of faceless communication that our society is quickly adapting. A hypocrisy exist within this more anonymous act of communication, in that people feel a false of privacy or secretive communique that comes with tangible written mail. The real fact is that within this improved technology, employees do not have the same level of assurance of privacy that common hand delivered mail tends to provide. To understand the problem we need to examine the difference between the handling of physical mail and its electronic counterpart. First of all, laws and statutes may protect letters handled by government agencies. Secondly, even physical mail handled by non-government agencies, like FEDEX or UPS have legal protections associated with them. However, because this technology is relatively new, legality is vague when governing employees and employers concerning email privacy. The following pages will describe some of the Present United States policy as espoused by corporations regarding email privacy. Then we will discuss both proposed and enacted legislation, and outline some of the recent cases that are used as precedent in courtroom decisions.
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