Right to privacy at place of work In the United States, is one's workplace generally considered to be a place where an employee can assume a relative level of privacy from hidden surveillance? For example, suppose that I had a private office at work. Can I legally assume a reasonable level of privacy in my "private" office. Or can my employer record, without my knowledge, conversations I have with my wife on my personal cell phone during my lunch break? Can my employer just have a live mic hooked up in my office 24-7 to see if I say anything they do not like? Legal disclaimer: This is a hypothetical question and I am not under the suspicion of my employer recording my conversations with my wife. I am not seeking personal legal advice for me or my agents.
You are right that this is probably a private space; you are wrong in thinking it is your private space; it isn't. The space belongs to your employer and they can do whatever they want with their space unless there is a law that says they can't. As to what type of "hidden surveillance" is allowed that depends on your particular circumstances including what state and federal laws apply and the employment contract you are covered by. As a starting point, if this was happening in Australia then: If you gave permission, all would be legal If you did not give permission: it would be illegal to record anything taking place across a public telecommunications system (i.e. phone tapping) it would be legal for anyone to make an audio recording (not phone tapping) of any conversation to which they were a party it would be legal to make a video recording without sound.
I did not write "confidential" on my letter, but I assumed a business proposal is automatically considered as a confidential material. An incorrect assumption unfortunately. Unless you have a confidentiality agreement (NDA) with the first company, they and their agents are not under any legal obligation to keep information you share with them confidential. How is the legal situation here? There is none on your side. You lied about a direct question asked and were caught in the lie. Company A had no obligation to keep what you sent confidential. Even if they did, that may not (depending on how the confidentiality agreement is worded) keep the employee of company A stating that they had received the same proposal. Chalk this one up to a lesson on confidentiality and honesty in business. There are no reasonable assumptions of confidentiality in business unless you specifically state that they are confidential or are provided as part of a confidentiality agreement.
The UK Government released an article last year that explains some of the issues relating to ownership of copyright This article is informative. The headline point: Ownership of literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and film works created by an employee during the course of their employment, automatically vests in their employer by virtue of section 11(2) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The meaning of during the course of their employment has been interpreted by the courts to mean during the course of normal or specifically assigned duties, and that these duties include the creation of intellectual property for the employer. Patents are similarly affected - if the role does not specify or would not imply the creation of patents and other IP, it may not vest in the company automatically. This is a standard clause and is designed to protect the interests of the company, in the event that you create intellectual property as part of your role. Bear in mind here that there's no real need for this property to be created during work hours. That is, if part of your role is to design new software, ownership of that software vests in the company, whether you spent substantial amounts of work hours making it or not. Conversely, if your role does not include, or would be expected to include, the creation of intellectual property, then if you do so - even if it is during work hours - ownership may not necessarily vest in the company. IP you create in the course of your employment will vest in the company in the course of your employment will probably mean: if you are employed to create IP generally, all any IP resulting from your work, or; if you are employed to create a specific work, that work and possibly related works. This is a fairly standard clause, for most companies - I have had several jobs (though none of them technology-related) and they all include some clause to this effect
The employee must, during and after employment, without limitation in time, observe a duty of confidentiality regarding [...] the Company's internal affairs such as business plans, profitability, pricing, employees, methods, processes, routines, code and the like as well as other information that the Company typically wants to keep secret The pure information that the company had at some time a security problem with their product is internal knowledge you only gained through working there. By what is written here, you are indeed prohibited from speaking about it. If it were public knowledge, you could point to a press release and say &quot;I did that, that was me fixing the problem&quot;. That would work. Because it doesn't share anything that isn't public anyway. But you cannot share things the company wants to keep secret. Finding out whether that contract is legally enforcable in your country and juristiction is the job of a real lawyer, but just as written, they are right. You signed a contract to not do that, not talk about it an certainly not publish it on the internet. So you should not do that, unless a good lawyer you trust tells you otherwise. That said, &quot;I found a security flaw&quot; is about as impressive as &quot;I found a dollar on the floor&quot;. Maybe you can talk about your knowledge to prevent something like it happening. That says nothing about whether or not it happened in your old company, and for me as an employer it is much more valuable to have you on board with structured knowledge you can apply, than with your memories of being lucky once.
The recording is not illegal because you've been told it would happen, and by not hanging up, you've agreed to have a conversation that can be recorded. This was determined in Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, Inc. applying the exception of Penal Code 632 that communications are not considered confidential if there is a reasonable expectation that the call will be overheard or recorded - being explicitly told that the call will be recorded makes this true. It would not be illegal for them to only record their own statements during the call, nor for you to record only your statements, either. In particular, the company is allowed to record the part of the call where they make this statement, as they are not recording a conversation, only their own (likely pre-recorded) statement (again?). Indeed, including their statement about the recording in the recording is common practise partly for protection against claims that the other party was not informed of the recording occurring.
Washington State is an "At Will" employment state meaning that, with exception to some protected classes and bargaining, the employer may terminate the employee for any reason the employer can cite, or no reason at all. If the firm used it as a benefit of the job but it wasn't agreed upon on the contract, its not a deception as if you can hold the job to the down season, you have less work to do. If a promise was made for employment into the down season during the negotiating of the job, and this was documented, it could be. It could be that he did all the work required of him, but another higher went above and beyond and he got the ax because he was the newest and the lesser performer. Either way, the employer is well within their right to fire an employee for any reason they choose absent discrimination based on protected class status.
Let's put to bed the myth of privacy that is at the heart of your question: in R v Sotheren (2001) NSWSC 204 Justice Dowd said “A person, in our society, does not have a right not to be photographed" So they can ask you to stop; its bad manners if you don't but it is not illegal. If they are the controller of the property then they can stop you filming from their property but they cannot stop you filming into their property from outside (either public land or land where you do have permission). See How do laws affect photography of non-humans in public when people may be in the frame?
Yes, phone numbers would generally qualify as Personal Data under GDPR. It would be so irrespective of whether you have also stored other information along with the phone numbers or not, since also information that indirectly could identify a natural person is Personal Data (provided that there are, somewhere else, public or not public, a register of who holds the specific phone number). See Article 4(1) GDPR. (One could possibly argue that the phone numbers would not be considered personal data if there is no actual register of who owns a specific phone number with any other party. Or if such register is in practice not available for anyone. It might be so in some cases, although I would not rely on it.) Whether you have the right to process the phone numbers must be assessed based on its lawfulness (see Article 6 GDPR). It could be based on consent, performance of contract, legitimate interest or any other ground set out therein.