Some employees in the West compare their workplace environments to totalitarian dystopias. They say they are stripped of any intellectual and personal privacy and that their managers monitor every e-mail, fax and second of Internet use. In contrast, Russians don’t appear to find the matter controversial. Why? Natalia Leibina investigates to find that the answer is as much a consequence of Russia’s low-tech offices as it is a cultural penchant for more personal interaction.

Raging debate in the West over office privacy, primarily in the domain of e-mail and the Internet, hasn’t yet caught on in Russia. Natalia Leibina takes a closer look to find out why .

Russians got acquainted with the Internet not more than five years ago, and for many, especially of the elderly generation, the main obstacle to getting into the depths of the Web is that they still don’t get along too well with computers.

While many families in the United States own at least one personal computer, in Russia people generally only have access to computers at work — and that is assuming they are working in the right field.

“I do not use [the Internet],” said an HR specialist at a big factory. “Secretaries bring me the printouts. We don’t need to go online; we are not computer worms.”

Even at high-tech companies, Russian workers aren’t climbing over each other to get online. As Svetlana Lopatina, chief of the technological systems support department of ITAR-TASS, said: “We prefer live communication, in a canteen, over a cup of coffee.”

As a result, for many Russians, debates about workplace privacy over e-mail and Internet use that rage in the West simply do have the same fever pitch here.

“We have not yet come to the point where e-mail privacy is an issue,” said Andrei Pavlov, IT manager at the Agence France Presse news agency.

In the United States, in contrast, there is no shortage of accusations between employers and employees on the matter.

According to Mikhail Usubyan, associate at Baker&McKenzie in Moscow, who specializes in IT and commerce law: “An employer’s main argument is that, during working hours, there should be no time for personal affairs.” Usubyan adds that article 11(a) of the 1984 Model U.S.S.R. Internal Labor Regulations specifies that working time should be used solely for productive labor.

But wasting company time is not the only concern, he added. Much more risky is having employees work with secret information in an unchecked environment. “Commercial secrets can be disclosed very easily just by pressing a button to sending a secret document to somebody else.” He adds that the 1984 Model U.S.S.R. Internal Labor Regulations Russian Labor and Civil Codes will be on employer’s side with regards to this, provided that an employer has developed relevant internal rules. The Civil Code states that information is considered proprietary if it has actual or potential commercial value, if it is legally protected from unauthorized access and if the holder protects its confidentiality.

Yevgeny Reyzman of the same law firm, also said that employee infringements over the Internet, such as sex-related crimes, threats and propagating extreme political ideas may also be the liability of an employer’s managers and therefore may negatively affect an employer. Thus, controlling Internet correspondence is a legal necessity for employers.

Mariana Marchuk, associate of Baker&McKenzie, added that “If it has not been written down on a manual copy in the Russian language that the employer can monitor correspondence, and if the employee has not given his consent to this policy in a written form, then the employer is breaking the law if he infringes the electronic privacy of an employee.”

But Marchuk continued to mention that she was not aware of any trials in Russia relating specifically to infringements in the privacy of e-mail correspondence, pointing out that “Russians are more inclined to resolve conflicts on a personal level, they are more likely to start a fight than to call the police.”

Usubyan added: “In the West, they are more concerned about it because they use the Internet and e-mail more; there is more correspondence.”

Olga Popel, a lawyer at Ackermann Bellmer legal services agency, says an employer has the right to spy on his employees and find out, for instance, if somebody is going to meet an official from the competition to release sensitive information. “But we have not yet had any precedents of this kind,” she said.

Popel added that it is normal for businesses to hire private detecting devices and use hidden cameras, but unless employees are informed they are being so monitored, it is against the law.
“Employees have a right to know, because such measures are an intrusion into their private lives,” she said.

Many Russian companies do not set any rules about using e-mail. Nikolai Zelnitsky, chief of the IT department at the municipal Bank of Moscow, says that “it is neither prohibited nor permitted to use e-mail for personal purposes; There is no special rule about it.”

Alexander Yegorov, chief of the HR department at Avangard Bank, said that everybody understands the need for corporate security: “We realize that we all are under control.” He added: “There is no abuse, and if somebody behaves improperly, he will be given a warning but no real punishment will follow.”

In many Western companies, the situation differs significantly: Administrators make sure that staff is well-informed.

“Every morning we start work on computers with a notice on the screen: For business use only,” said a staffing and development manager at a big American bank in Moscow.

Similarly, in the representative office of Cisco Systems International B.V. there is a rule barring anyone from corresponding in a language other than English:

“We are a foreign company, so it is important that everybody can understand what is being written,” Cisco’s Valerya Matveyeva. “After you have typed in the password, each and every one of your steps will be monitored.”

However, Popel also noted that clever people can manipulate any system of checks or control: “If an employee knows about the existence of security monitoring, he may play with his messages deliberately, counting on the possibility that his information will be read at the very top.”

Pavlov said his e-mail was his business and no one else’s: “If I found out that somebody else had access to my correspondence, I would be furious.” Popel said she would stop writing certain letters for fear of others intruding into her private affairs.

Unlike Russia, in the United States cases of infringements of e-mail privacy are regulated according to the 1986 Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act. According to Reyzman, in Russia there is no specific law about e-mail correspondence, besides Article 23 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which gives all citizens a right to privacy, and Article 138 of the Criminal Code, which says that a person has a criminal liability for the violation of another person's privacy of correspondence.

People in this country don’t seem to be ready to claim their rights, though, according to Matveyeva. “The problem is that companies that can afford to supply their employees with means of electronic communication can also pay high wages, but they are few and that is why people hold onto jobs in such companies.”

“We obey the laws, because we don’t want to jeopardize our financial interests,” she added.

Sergei Yelchinov of the production concern Dovgan explains the absence of conflicts in Russian companies in the following way: “Here everything is easier. We trust our people; we have no secrets to hide.”