Court rules against man in porn-at-work case
 

(gg)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Montana man who used his
work computer to access child pornography does not
have a reasonable expectation of privacy that would
bar a search of the machine, a U.S. federal appeals
court ruled on Tuesday.

Jeffrey Ziegler had argued that his Fourth Amendment
rights against unreasonable searches and seizures
should prevent the government from using evidence that
he had viewed many images of child pornography at
work.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San
Francisco cited similar past cases and found that even
if some people lament the lack of privacy at work, the
law was against Ziegler.

"Social norms suggest that employees are not entitled
to privacy in the use of workplace computers, which
belong to their employers and pose significant dangers
in terms of diminished productivity and even employer
liability," Diarmuid O'Scannlain wrote for a
three-judge panel.

"Employer monitoring is largely an assumed practice,
and thus we think a disseminated computer-use policy
is entirely sufficient to defeat any expectation that
an employee might nonetheless harbor."