It’s private, court rules

– Europe’s top rights court ruled yesterday in favour of a Romanian man fired by his employer over private messages sent at work, overturning a previous decision with wide ramifications for privacy in the workplace.

The apex body of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) backed 38-year-old Bogdan Mihai Barbulescu, who said his privacy was violated when he was sacked in 2007 for sending private messages over Yahoo messaging.

The decision yesterday by the 17 most senior judges at the Strasbourg-based court in France modifies a ruling in January last year, when the court found that employers were justified in snooping on their employees.

The judges said that Barbulescu’s bosses and Romanian courts had “not adequately protected [his] right to respect for his private life and correspondence”.

In a judgment published on the court’s website, it said it was unclear whether Barbulescu had been warned about the monitoring, or whether he was aware of the extent of the intrusion.

It also said Romanian courts had failed to determine why the monitoring measures were justified and whether there were other ways of checking on him “entailing less intrusion”.

Barbulescu was sacked after being found to have chatted with his fiancee and brother. –