Employees’ use of their own smartphones and tablets for work...
Employees’ use of their own smartphones and tablets for work opens a Pandora’s box that can include criminal exposure as well as civil liability to parties from opponents in lawsuits to accident victims and the workers themselves, a technology lawyer…
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said Tuesday. The use of Android products raises a broad risk of violating state and federal network-security laws and regulations requiring data encryption because the passwords for that protection are the same as those for the devices themselves, said Aaron Tantleff, an attorney with Foley & Lardner. Employees put their “entire personal life” on mobile devices they own and use them for purposes they wouldn’t put company-owned hardware to, so they have a high expectation of privacy in the information on them, he said on a Celesq AttorneysEd Center webcast over the West LegalEdcenter. Company access to the devices and the data on them becomes a major issue, Tantleff said. Actions including an IT department’s “remote wipe” of a device that has been lost or hacked, or that has been used by a departed employee, go from routine with company-owned gear to possible violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the counterparts passed by all the states, he said. Employers can face court sanctions for failing to turn over to lawsuit opponents information subject to evidence discovery requirements but unavailable because it’s on devices owned by others, Tantleff said. And even companies aware of legal risks like these never think about personal injuries in this connection, he said. “Employers in some cases have been found liable” for distracted driving by employees, Tantleff said.