p2pnet.net News:- An ITWorld Canada article by Nestor E. Arellano includes:

probe recently carried out by Hewlett-Packard Co. into its own board members in the U.S. has raised concerns in Canada about how telecommunication service providers protect customers’ private information.

…

"The need to protect intellectual property or company information should not trump privacy and human rights," according to David Fewer counsel for the Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).

There was also an article in ITBusiness.ca by Sarah Lysecki, but the article seemed to miss the fact that this was home phone and personal cellphone information that was illegally obtained, not communications that happened on company phones.

Ruby said the legal lesson to be learned from cases like HP and Maclean’s is, if a firm is concerned about the legalities of employee information, it should get employees and board directors to sign away their phone rights in advance.

I believe it should be unlawful to condition the employment or the participation on a board on the condition of signing away rights such as this. While it is reasonable for a company to consider company equipment to be personal to the company, and communications that happen over that infrastructure not private to the individual, the same can not be said of equipment not supplied by the company.

Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He’s also the CLUE policy coordinator.]