UPDATE: Russian min says firms cannot eavesdrop on workers easily
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MOSCOW, May 11 (PRIME) -- Russian companies can only eavesdrop their employees’ mobile phone talks only with their voluntary consent, which may be mentioned in the labor contract, Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said Wednesday.
“The issue is not about ethics, but about law. Today, from the point of view of law on the secrecy of communications and correspondence, there must be a court decision. When it comes to the product of InfoWatch, their certain market niche is unclear,” Nikiforov said.
“Perhaps, within the frameworks of labor agreements between the employee and the employer, an additional clause could be introduced that the employee agrees that the employer would control their correspondence and phone talks by special means; whether they drink, eat or do anything else.”
Domestic firm InfoWatch, run by Natalya Kasperskaya, designed a solution allowing employers to intercept and analyze contents of talks of their employees over mobile phones, business daily Kommersant reported earlier on Wednesday.
A machine, not a human being, will read transcripts of talks, that is why the initiative will not violate the constitutional right of citizens for secrecy of communications, Kasperskaya said.
Sources in four IT companies and an employee of a large cellular operator told the daily that InfoWatch’s solution is aimed at protecting firms from data leaks via eavesdropping on talks of workers in office.
“An apparatus is to be installed at a company’s premises and integrated with the network of a cellular operator to become a reliable base station. Then the base will catch voice traffic from mobile phones within its active zone,” Kasperskaya said without disclosing the device’s developer.
“Customers are recommended to switch on the device for partial control and only for corporate SIM cards,” she said.
The device will not register calls from other or personal SIM cards or re-address them to standard base stations of operators.
InfoWatch produces corporate means of data leak prevention and protection from target attacks.
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