Anecdotally, I met someone who stopped updating their linkedin profile because he found out someone was making anonymous comments and allegations to his employers. He didn't know what they were or who it was because it came second hand from a colleague who told him that an exec had asked about him because of an anonymous message.
Also, whisper networks in tech are very much a thing and they are full of just the quality of people you would expect to find in them. When asked about people I truly can't stand, I say I am sympathetic to the barriers they faced to success and we didn't know each other well. It's not a code, it's the truth. I don't give much weight to the opinions of people who are cruel or have axes to grind either. This is a rare view.
Keep your public social networks well-pruned. Don't talk about plans, the future, or uncertain opportunities, and if you work for crappy people, get out as fast as you can before you give them an unlimited option on causing your reputation harm for the rest of your career.
The real world is crazy. The amount of bullying, stalking and attacks I've gotten after getting a series of promotions in a rotten workplace with a few bad apples is unbelievable.
If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.
Whisper networks just mean powerful people who talk among each other and do their research. That will always be the case. In politics isn’t that just the standard form of discourse?
First, we have only one side of the story. The claim is the advisor never spoke to her about the problems he had with her, and we shouldn't simply assume the claim is true. OTOH, I can easily believe it is, given my experience in grad school. While some professors were quite fussy about quality in the thesis, others accepted that most PhD's (in engineering) are not targeting scientific research after the degree, and lower the standards to allow them to graduate. But they absolutely will not support such people in getting a research position at a university or a government lab. Some are open about it: "If you're targeting research and want my recommendations for that endeavor, this is what you need to do. If not, then all you need is X, Y and Z." Unfortunately, not all advisors are as frank.
Also keep in mind that the person may well have been a very competent researcher, while simultaneously being hard to work with. It's quite fair to point it out when asked, and it's quite fair to disrecommend someone because of it.
I don't think the article presents any evidence of active blacklisting, where one is going out of their way to tell everyone (without solicitation) "Don't hire this person!"
Finally, the real issue: What role should references play in the hiring process? I personally would love a world where we never rely on letters of recommendation and references - I think they are the weakest link in the hiring process. However, if we do accept references/letters of recommendation, then everything in the article is fair game. If you ever asked someone what they thought of a candidate before hiring them, you are part of the same culture that this person's advisor is.
As a fellow Aspy, I started reading this thinking, I bet he's a bit of a difficult person. Maybe an Aspy.
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Ah! Yes, I can guess which one of those three is the reason people found you difficult.
Yes, I’m interested in the legal status of the remarks made about the author. Nothing seems outright discriminatory or illegal; there’s no law against calling people stupid and unpleasant, presumably. And since your PhD supervisor and examiner aren’t your employers, what laws would apply even regarding obviously discriminatory stuff said about you? Do they actually have any legal obligations to bring disciplinary action against someone who is just “unpleasant” before openly calling them unpleasant?
Yes, they can sue – anyone can sue for anything, after all.
Would they win? Maybe, but the cost would probably not be worth it and of course there's the reputational damage caused by being seen as someone willing to litigate against their employer / university, etc.
In the US, many states have an Open Records act on the books. Typically this extends to the emails that acedemics at public universities send using their .edu addresses (among many other things). Though it varies from state to state, generally communications in and among anyone that recieves state funds in any way are considered part of the public record.
For instance, in CA the Sacremento Bee mantains a DB of all the public worker salaries, including university professor salaries, donations, grant funds, patent royalty payments, etc. It is very comprehensive and I know female acedemics that have used it to argue (suessfully) for better pay: https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/article22946...
In CO, there is the open records act. From what I hear, it is farily simple to obtain all emails that a professor sends out, including ones from a personal email account that happens to send out emails via a router that the state owns: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/cora.html
> You can generally do the same thing in the US for emails to/from public university addresses with a FOIA request
No, you can't, because FOIA applies to federal agencies only. Some official communications of a public university might be subject to similar state sunshine laws, but not all email to and from public university email addresses (even some official communication would be protected by FERPA or other privacy laws, and therefore not disclosable under a state open records law.)
> "I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared ..."
How are different people with the same name distinguished in these cases?
Name might be (almost) unambiguous for some people, but lots of us have many, many namesakes. Is the institution required to reliably tell apart which of the messages were meaning the person making the information request, and which were talking about someone else? What are the penalties for leaking emails that were discussing someone else who has the same name?
I actually think I've been "blacklisted" at a government agency in my country, or at least someone with hiring power must be working there who specifically does not want to hire me.
Two reasons -
1. some years ago there was a job listing at the agency for a programmer with experience in a governmental specification that I was the technical guy in the working group that made the specification, for heavy experience in some technologies I am very good at, including some international standards in which I am thanked as one of the contributors to the standard and when I applied I got the standard reply some months later they went with someone more qualified which is their choice however I can say with 99.9% certainty there was only one other person in the country possibly more qualified than I am (given the technologies involved and the time) and he wasn't applying.
2. another time they put up a technical challenge and normally when I complete a technical challenge of the particular sort I did the potential employer likes to meet me (they put it online and said try to do this and see if you would be someone we might like to hire). And they said they decided to go with someone else but they did not have any comments on my technical challenge.
So what I'm saying I would really like to get all details from any communications regarding possibly hiring me from that ministry because it might be interesting, but then again I am also of the kind of personality that it just might infuriate me - and what good is that?
I don't know if your government is like my government, but a lot of the hiring decisions my government makes are often corrupt and based on X government leader owes Y person so this job will go to one of Y person's friends.
You could be right, but "more qualified" doesn't have to mean "technical expertise in this exact standard". They could easily be weighing factors such as previous leadership experience, team/group experience, stated career goals, stated interests, demeanor, or experience in other tangential technologies.
> I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email
Hmm, I don't think I like this, and I don't understand how the GDPR allows you to do this.
While I understand that stored emails that mention you are technically "data about you", I wouldn't consider them "your data".
Emails are a form of personal communication, and are only really accessible by the author and recipients. Furthermore, those emails would contain PI about other individuals - what of their rights, or indeed the rights of the email authors (regardless of the message content)?
I support the GDPR, but I don't think using it like this falls within it's intent.
This has been the case under the old data protection regime as well, and indeed I know someone else who used it against an educational institution who they suspected was blacklisting them - and also turned out to be right.
It's squarely within the spirit of data protection as well. Are those emails data? Yes. Do they relate to you? Yes. Are they being used to make decisions which affect your employment? Also yes.
Redacting the PII of others in the same emails is an extremely tricky problem though.
The lesson of this and other things like the LIBOR chatroom has to be "don't conspire against people on your employer's computer systems".
There is a flip side to blacklisting; one of the things that has emerged from the #metoo era is that many institutions had staff who were "missing stairs" - they were widely known to harass female staff, and the whisper networks propagated this, and even in some cases the male staff were aware that they shouldn't leave X alone with a female staff member, but no action was taken.
GRPR forces institutions to be open with their disciplinary processes. You can't "shadowban" staff, unless you're willing to do it entirely verbally without ever committing to email.
I can't speak to European law, but in the US, work-related emails of government employees are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. Sensitive information, like health or education data of individuals is redacted before it is released.
I usually think about this issue in relation to driving: Do we (society) have the right to your driving performance data? In other words, if your car knows you drive like a reckless idiot should it "narc" on you?
- - - -
It seems to me that this sort of request means that our mental models of email have to change. This is incumbent anyway: most people still think email is private, when in fact it's more like postcards, in that anyone who handles it can read it. The misbegotten idea that you have any digital privacy in the absence of proper encryption has to die. (I don't like it, and am not advocating for it, I'm just calling it like I see it.)
The GDPR does say "the right to obtain a copy (...) shall not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others", but it doesn't spell out what that means.
Still, your work email account can be monitored by your employer (though in the EU they have to provide notice of that monitoring), so you don't have the same protection as in a private account.
OTOH, it could be a violation of privacy / data-protection for the author of this piece to be divulging the contents of these emails, even if they have a right to a copy.
also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation:
In particular, please tell me what you know about me in your information systems, whether or not contained in databases, and including e-mail, documents on your networks, or voice or other media that you may store.
Victim of nasty blacklisting myself. My advise is to be way nicer and make far more friends in the industry than the blacklister. Especially if you are autistic spectrum, you need a good support network.
>Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Easier to resort to such hypotheses than be self critical, I guess.
Do we really fall in the category where one student with apparently decent thesis results gets ostarcized by her advisor AND the examiners, where no one in the faculty or comittee would stand for her, even though successfull students do bring a lot of prestige to their team, lab and advisor ? Would it really be in their interest if they have no reason to ? She is doubtly their first tutored PhD ever, and I guess have they seen enough to give feedback that is relied on by other actors in the field ?
I mean, we're all old enough to have met people that despite competence are hard to work (or be) with and would rather not have to deal with.
And considering she did a smart and unconventional GDPR request, and she's legitimately pissed off about its results but goes as far as to publish in the press about it...
i feel for this person. my mother got blacklisted in her teaching profession, this stress triggered in her dormant traumas from her childhood, and she's been on medication now for 20 years due to these people pushing her over the edge with such behaviours.
no matter how good you feel about yourself, give others a chance, even if they dont 'gel well with you'. don't feel 'threatened' by other people who are talented, feel graced by their wits and try to grow from them instead of kicking them down.
lack of respect and integrity at its worst, it's an epidemic in our society.
>I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email.
The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one else consider this extremely concerning?
I'm pretty sure that this would only apply in the contexts of business dealings -- anything you produce from a business you work for should not be considered your private anything, it's work material you produced for that employer, and the actions became the employer's actions after executed.
Regulations that are stronger than they should are made to be broken and circumvented.
There's at least one likely future in which, following a couple multi-million lawsuit baseds on such requests, a kind of 'blind referencing' becomes the norm, taught and enforced by companies and organizations. "Never refer to individuals by name, use the Company Directory's Hash Function". Or something silly like that.
Just like companies delete employees emails in the second they are allowed to do so by law - can you imagine if the law was to keep them forever? We'd have extreme changes in email formats and technology every decade or so, to render it impossible to read old-enough emails from disgruntled ex-employees and etc.
> Domestic purposes – personal data processed in the course of a purely personal or household activity, with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, is outside the GDPR’s scope. This means that if you only use personal data for such things as writing to friends and family or taking pictures for your own enjoyment, you are not subject to the GDPR.
"Your private emails" are therefore not covered by the GDPR.
Unless your definition of "your" private emails includes those you send in your work capacity?
You are the "data controller" for your own emails. Emails stored on your employer's system are under their remit as the "data controller" to whom the subject access requests will be made. Emails on your employer's system are "your" or "private" only in a very limited sense.
GDPR does not entitle random people to leaf through your gmail.
(Even without data protection law this kind of thing can still happen during the "discovery" process of a lawsuit, but that's a much higher bar.)
There is certainly an ethical challenge in balancing privacy and data protection issues when there is more than one subject involved, as in this case with both the PhD graduate and those other parties whose emails referred to them.
It seems a terrible precedent if any communications service may in general be required to disclose the otherwise private communications of its users if they happen to mention any individual by name (or, presumably, any other identifying features, since this is the GDPR).
On the other hand, for matters of professional/business correspondence that relate to a specific individual, where the information being stored or shared around may be incorrect or misleading and the individual is being personally harmed as a result, isn't that exactly the sort of problem that data protection laws (and the anti-blacklisting laws, and defamation laws more generally, for that matter) are trying to fix?
It doesn't make any practical difference whether the questionable personal data happens to be stored in something structured like a formal employee record or in unstructured form through emails shared by other staff. It's the data, how it's being used and who is using it that matter the most.
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Asperger's could be a reasonable explanation.
It's quite likely that ones background and developmental disorders shape one's personality. However, it's still their personality. So what if it has a reason?
This touches on the dark abyss of "free will". In some sense all we are is a cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In that sense everything one does has a "reason". Yet we live our lives, and shape our societies, with the idea that sane adults have an ability to chart their own course, in some sense. (in contrast to children or "insane" people who are considered more reactive/automatic hence not responsible for their actions).
What part of my actions are my responsibility (and therefor have consequences) and what part is beyond my control (and should be forgiven, at least partially)?
“There but for the grace of God go I”, a sentiment even atheistic people should share. Maybe in dry scientific speak, “if it weren’t for the entirety of human culture, evolution, and the specific conditions of the Earth from prehistory until the present, I would not be here where I am today in my particular frame of mind. I didn’t even get to choose which ‘I’ I am, I could have been the person I hate or pity instead”
This is a fascinating thing to think about. Some properties like missiong legs are thought of as disabilities and often compensated for by the state. But where is the line? Is depression (hindering ones ability to work or lead a happy life) a disability, or just being not intelligent enough to be a good programmer?
WE ARE NOT cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In any sense, degree, or verified theory. In my OPINION, cellular automata fascination is an obsessive disorder that geniuses are at risk for, ca. Fredkin, Feynman, Wolfram. The operant word is disorder.
Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist.
You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in.
People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that god gave humanity free will.
No part of your actions are truly the responsibility of you as a person but the fate of cause & effect and everything outside one's control. The system of society with genetics & environment being imperfect makes bad people. Otherwise we would just have 'people' in a system of perfect equality.
There are new EU-wide data regulations, known as the GDPR, that were introduced in 2018. These regulations allow people to make a data request, called a Subject Access Request, to any institution that holds any data on them. The definition of data is pretty broad, and I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email.
While it may now be legal in the EU to request a copy of all emails that mention you by name, socially it would be a terrible betrayal of trust. Ironically, this seems like clear confirmatory evidence of the sort of red-flag behavior that would cause an advisor to send private emails strongly discouraging others from hiring you even if you were qualified on-paper for the position.
[+] [-] motohagiography|6 years ago|reply
Also, whisper networks in tech are very much a thing and they are full of just the quality of people you would expect to find in them. When asked about people I truly can't stand, I say I am sympathetic to the barriers they faced to success and we didn't know each other well. It's not a code, it's the truth. I don't give much weight to the opinions of people who are cruel or have axes to grind either. This is a rare view.
Keep your public social networks well-pruned. Don't talk about plans, the future, or uncertain opportunities, and if you work for crappy people, get out as fast as you can before you give them an unlimited option on causing your reputation harm for the rest of your career.
[+] [-] wallace_f|6 years ago|reply
If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.
[+] [-] traderjane|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BeetleB|6 years ago|reply
First, we have only one side of the story. The claim is the advisor never spoke to her about the problems he had with her, and we shouldn't simply assume the claim is true. OTOH, I can easily believe it is, given my experience in grad school. While some professors were quite fussy about quality in the thesis, others accepted that most PhD's (in engineering) are not targeting scientific research after the degree, and lower the standards to allow them to graduate. But they absolutely will not support such people in getting a research position at a university or a government lab. Some are open about it: "If you're targeting research and want my recommendations for that endeavor, this is what you need to do. If not, then all you need is X, Y and Z." Unfortunately, not all advisors are as frank.
Also keep in mind that the person may well have been a very competent researcher, while simultaneously being hard to work with. It's quite fair to point it out when asked, and it's quite fair to disrecommend someone because of it.
I don't think the article presents any evidence of active blacklisting, where one is going out of their way to tell everyone (without solicitation) "Don't hire this person!"
Finally, the real issue: What role should references play in the hiring process? I personally would love a world where we never rely on letters of recommendation and references - I think they are the weakest link in the hiring process. However, if we do accept references/letters of recommendation, then everything in the article is fair game. If you ever asked someone what they thought of a candidate before hiring them, you are part of the same culture that this person's advisor is.
[+] [-] Singletoned|6 years ago|reply
> Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation.
Ah! Yes, I can guess which one of those three is the reason people found you difficult.
[+] [-] clavalle|6 years ago|reply
Engaging differently socially, while difficult in some sense, isn't necessarily unpleasant.
[+] [-] matthewowen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggm|6 years ago|reply
Good that we both got there.
[+] [-] Circuits|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] lordfoom|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silveroriole|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|6 years ago|reply
The OP has to show that the statements were published, they are defamatory, and that the OP suffered serious harm as a result.
It'd be for the publisher of the comments to prove (on the balance of probabilities) that the comments were either
Suing someone for defamation is expensive.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law
[+] [-] matthewheath|6 years ago|reply
Would they win? Maybe, but the cost would probably not be worth it and of course there's the reputational damage caused by being seen as someone willing to litigate against their employer / university, etc.
[+] [-] ceejayoz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] harryh|6 years ago|reply
This seems kind of wild to me, but apparently it works.
[+] [-] Balgair|6 years ago|reply
For instance, in CA the Sacremento Bee mantains a DB of all the public worker salaries, including university professor salaries, donations, grant funds, patent royalty payments, etc. It is very comprehensive and I know female acedemics that have used it to argue (suessfully) for better pay: https://www.sacbee.com/news/databases/state-pay/article22946...
In CO, there is the open records act. From what I hear, it is farily simple to obtain all emails that a professor sends out, including ones from a personal email account that happens to send out emails via a router that the state owns: https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/info_center/cora.html
[+] [-] dragonwriter|6 years ago|reply
No, you can't, because FOIA applies to federal agencies only. Some official communications of a public university might be subject to similar state sunshine laws, but not all email to and from public university email addresses (even some official communication would be protected by FERPA or other privacy laws, and therefore not disclosable under a state open records law.)
[+] [-] wallace_f|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inetknght|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ptaipale|6 years ago|reply
How are different people with the same name distinguished in these cases?
Name might be (almost) unambiguous for some people, but lots of us have many, many namesakes. Is the institution required to reliably tell apart which of the messages were meaning the person making the information request, and which were talking about someone else? What are the penalties for leaking emails that were discussing someone else who has the same name?
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|6 years ago|reply
Two reasons -
1. some years ago there was a job listing at the agency for a programmer with experience in a governmental specification that I was the technical guy in the working group that made the specification, for heavy experience in some technologies I am very good at, including some international standards in which I am thanked as one of the contributors to the standard and when I applied I got the standard reply some months later they went with someone more qualified which is their choice however I can say with 99.9% certainty there was only one other person in the country possibly more qualified than I am (given the technologies involved and the time) and he wasn't applying.
2. another time they put up a technical challenge and normally when I complete a technical challenge of the particular sort I did the potential employer likes to meet me (they put it online and said try to do this and see if you would be someone we might like to hire). And they said they decided to go with someone else but they did not have any comments on my technical challenge.
So what I'm saying I would really like to get all details from any communications regarding possibly hiring me from that ministry because it might be interesting, but then again I am also of the kind of personality that it just might infuriate me - and what good is that?
[+] [-] sct202|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahdum|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|6 years ago|reply
Hmm, I don't think I like this, and I don't understand how the GDPR allows you to do this.
While I understand that stored emails that mention you are technically "data about you", I wouldn't consider them "your data".
Emails are a form of personal communication, and are only really accessible by the author and recipients. Furthermore, those emails would contain PI about other individuals - what of their rights, or indeed the rights of the email authors (regardless of the message content)?
I support the GDPR, but I don't think using it like this falls within it's intent.
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
It's squarely within the spirit of data protection as well. Are those emails data? Yes. Do they relate to you? Yes. Are they being used to make decisions which affect your employment? Also yes.
Redacting the PII of others in the same emails is an extremely tricky problem though.
The lesson of this and other things like the LIBOR chatroom has to be "don't conspire against people on your employer's computer systems".
There is a flip side to blacklisting; one of the things that has emerged from the #metoo era is that many institutions had staff who were "missing stairs" - they were widely known to harass female staff, and the whisper networks propagated this, and even in some cases the male staff were aware that they shouldn't leave X alone with a female staff member, but no action was taken.
GRPR forces institutions to be open with their disciplinary processes. You can't "shadowban" staff, unless you're willing to do it entirely verbally without ever committing to email.
[+] [-] istjohn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carapace|6 years ago|reply
- - - -
It seems to me that this sort of request means that our mental models of email have to change. This is incumbent anyway: most people still think email is private, when in fact it's more like postcards, in that anyone who handles it can read it. The misbegotten idea that you have any digital privacy in the absence of proper encryption has to die. (I don't like it, and am not advocating for it, I'm just calling it like I see it.)
[+] [-] awakeasleep|6 years ago|reply
Outside of that, what is your take on the fact that there must be administrators that have the ability to look through all a system's email?
[+] [-] icebraining|6 years ago|reply
Still, your work email account can be monitored by your employer (though in the EU they have to provide notice of that monitoring), so you don't have the same protection as in a private account.
OTOH, it could be a violation of privacy / data-protection for the author of this piece to be divulging the contents of these emails, even if they have a right to a copy.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codeulike|6 years ago|reply
edit: Official GDPR site, page on email: https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/
also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce...
In particular, please tell me what you know about me in your information systems, whether or not contained in databases, and including e-mail, documents on your networks, or voice or other media that you may store.
[+] [-] crb002|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hycaria|6 years ago|reply
Easier to resort to such hypotheses than be self critical, I guess.
Do we really fall in the category where one student with apparently decent thesis results gets ostarcized by her advisor AND the examiners, where no one in the faculty or comittee would stand for her, even though successfull students do bring a lot of prestige to their team, lab and advisor ? Would it really be in their interest if they have no reason to ? She is doubtly their first tutored PhD ever, and I guess have they seen enough to give feedback that is relied on by other actors in the field ?
I mean, we're all old enough to have met people that despite competence are hard to work (or be) with and would rather not have to deal with.
And considering she did a smart and unconventional GDPR request, and she's legitimately pissed off about its results but goes as far as to publish in the press about it...
[+] [-] vectorEQ|6 years ago|reply
no matter how good you feel about yourself, give others a chance, even if they dont 'gel well with you'. don't feel 'threatened' by other people who are talented, feel graced by their wits and try to grow from them instead of kicking them down.
lack of respect and integrity at its worst, it's an epidemic in our society.
[+] [-] Grue3|6 years ago|reply
The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one else consider this extremely concerning?
[+] [-] awinder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gota|6 years ago|reply
There's at least one likely future in which, following a couple multi-million lawsuit baseds on such requests, a kind of 'blind referencing' becomes the norm, taught and enforced by companies and organizations. "Never refer to individuals by name, use the Company Directory's Hash Function". Or something silly like that.
Just like companies delete employees emails in the second they are allowed to do so by law - can you imagine if the law was to keep them forever? We'd have extreme changes in email formats and technology every decade or so, to render it impossible to read old-enough emails from disgruntled ex-employees and etc.
[+] [-] Dayshine|6 years ago|reply
> Domestic purposes – personal data processed in the course of a purely personal or household activity, with no connection to a professional or commercial activity, is outside the GDPR’s scope. This means that if you only use personal data for such things as writing to friends and family or taking pictures for your own enjoyment, you are not subject to the GDPR.
"Your private emails" are therefore not covered by the GDPR.
Unless your definition of "your" private emails includes those you send in your work capacity?
[+] [-] pjc50|6 years ago|reply
GDPR does not entitle random people to leaf through your gmail.
(Even without data protection law this kind of thing can still happen during the "discovery" process of a lawsuit, but that's a much higher bar.)
[+] [-] Silhouette|6 years ago|reply
It seems a terrible precedent if any communications service may in general be required to disclose the otherwise private communications of its users if they happen to mention any individual by name (or, presumably, any other identifying features, since this is the GDPR).
On the other hand, for matters of professional/business correspondence that relate to a specific individual, where the information being stored or shared around may be incorrect or misleading and the individual is being personally harmed as a result, isn't that exactly the sort of problem that data protection laws (and the anti-blacklisting laws, and defamation laws more generally, for that matter) are trying to fix?
It doesn't make any practical difference whether the questionable personal data happens to be stored in something structured like a formal employee record or in unstructured form through emails shared by other staff. It's the data, how it's being used and who is using it that matter the most.
[+] [-] air7|6 years ago|reply
It's quite likely that ones background and developmental disorders shape one's personality. However, it's still their personality. So what if it has a reason?
This touches on the dark abyss of "free will". In some sense all we are is a cellular-automata chugging along according to the laws of physics. In that sense everything one does has a "reason". Yet we live our lives, and shape our societies, with the idea that sane adults have an ability to chart their own course, in some sense. (in contrast to children or "insane" people who are considered more reactive/automatic hence not responsible for their actions).
What part of my actions are my responsibility (and therefor have consequences) and what part is beyond my control (and should be forgiven, at least partially)?
[+] [-] zwkrt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solarkraft|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aj7|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sysbin|6 years ago|reply
You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in.
People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that god gave humanity free will.
No part of your actions are truly the responsibility of you as a person but the fate of cause & effect and everything outside one's control. The system of society with genetics & environment being imperfect makes bad people. Otherwise we would just have 'people' in a system of perfect equality.
[+] [-] turk73|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] linuxftw|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nkurz|6 years ago|reply
While it may now be legal in the EU to request a copy of all emails that mention you by name, socially it would be a terrible betrayal of trust. Ironically, this seems like clear confirmatory evidence of the sort of red-flag behavior that would cause an advisor to send private emails strongly discouraging others from hiring you even if you were qualified on-paper for the position.