Snooping not Necessarily a Crime, but not in the Philippines

The Associated Press reported of employment cases involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies on company databases snooping by employees. It is now common in the US’s utilities, telecommunications, and accounting industries to have employees snoop on the companies’ databases.

This is because access to the huge databases of credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and energy usage or consumption information tempts employees to use it. They can either use it for their own or sell it. It leads to numerous crimes like libel, identity theft, stalking, and other privacy invasions. And yet, the US find it hard to prosecute these employees because in many cases snooping is not punishable unless it is used to commit a punishable crime.

Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resources Center said that, “something must be done in the state level to make this illegal”. State regulators and law makers must realize that mere snooping even if the information in not confidential is a crime. Companies should also put up software to track the access of the employees to the databases.

And here I thought that the United States had better data protection laws just because they have more laws. Our E-commerce Act can certainly prosecute these employees if this happened in the Philippines. The mere act of unauthorized access is already a punishable crime. It is hacking as long as the person or employee in this case snoops through the databases of the computers without authority.

SOURCE: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghPenZUJTE7BfSfgQbj6RX597DEAD8V019TG0