Eavesdropping, legal or not?

I worked in IT for a few different companies. It's all legal. when you sign the agreements one of the covered things is that all e-mail to and from your work e-mail is property of the company and can be reviewed at any time. The same goes with all phone calls and voicemail.

 

I'm not so certain that it is always legal for a business to monitor every call. Accourding to this source (http://books.google.com/books?id=-0imT19XjtEC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=workplace+phone+monitoring+of+employees+legal&source=bl&ots=wKbB7bgwFN&sig=fqOHde3LNn06WHg6YsL_tD6EzXc&hl=en&ei=LX6dSomeFeTcmQe73am8Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=workplace%20phone%20monitoring%20of%20employees%20legal&f=false), they can monitor to protect their business (business-related calls) but they're required to cease monitoring once it has been determined that it's a personal call rather than a business one. They may take action about using the company property for personal use, but it may not be legal to listen into a personal conversation. Laws can also vary from state to state. Federal law would be the minimum restriction on a business owner. Your state may impose greater restrictions beyond the federal minimum.

Usually to be legal, they would have had to notify her by policy that all phone calls would be monitored.

 

It's completely legal. I actually moniter my sales reps phone calls all the time. I need to know their strengths and weaknesses to do my job correctly. I have a little button on my phone that says "call listen," I click it and then hit the proper extention. I am listening to them and they can't hear me. Do it multiple times a day, and yes we have used it to fire people. Hey I will do it right now, it is kind of fun.