Google Health and Workplace Privacy

The New York reported on Friday about a recent privacy at work case. Mr. Sidell was fired by his employer. He left the company premises without signing out from his personal Yahoo email account, and the company allegedly read his personal emails.

This is an interesting case to follow, because the judges will have to answer to the question: do employers have the right to read their employee’s personal emails, when employees are accessing their email accounts using the company’s computer system?

Mr. Sidell used a Yahoo account. What if he had used a Gmail account, and was still signed up on the company’s computer? Would the employer have the right to peruse through his documents (Google documents), his blog (Blogger!) , and even his medical data (Google Health)?