FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 14 Feb 2000 19:57:46 -0500 To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: World Socialists condemn Northwest employees computer seizure Copies to: editor@wsws.org Send reply to: declan@well.com
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/nwa-f11.shtml
US court orders seizure of Northwest flight attendants' home computers
By Jerry White 11 February 2000
Northwest Airlines last week began court-authorized searches of the home computers of flight attendants whom the airline suspects organized a sick-out over the New Year's holiday. Two computer forensic experts, hired by Northwest, seized the computers of a rank-and-file flight attendant who operates a web site and electronic bulletin boards, and copied the hard drives from the computers of 21 individuals, including private e-mail messages. The investigators also spent two hours searching computers at the Bloomington, Minnesota offices of Teamsters Local 2000, which represents Northwest's 11,000 flight attendants.
Last month, after a high number of sick calls from flight attendants forced the company to cancel flights over New Years, Northwest sued the union and individually-named flight attendants, alleging they had violated federal law by orchestrating a sick-out. US District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul, Minnesota agreed and issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting Teamsters Local 2000, its leaders and specific flight attendants from encouraging or participating in "sick-outs" or other illegal job actions. The judge gave Northwest the right to seek evidence relating to the job action, including searching through the e-mails of 43 individuals, well beyond the number of people named in the original lawsuit.
The company has particularly targeted two dissident flight attendants, Kevin Griffin of Honolulu and Ted Reeve of North Hollywood, California, who operate web sites and electronic bulletin boards that have been critical of both the company and the union. Flight attendants have been fighting for a new contract since September 1996 and are anxious to recoup concessions that the union granted to the now highly profitable airline earlier in the decade. Last August, flight attendants used Internet forums to organize the overwhelming defeat of a contract proposal endorsed by Local 2000 and Teamsters General President James Hoffa.
Northwest accuses Griffin and Reeve of inciting the alleged job action. The company's attorneys cited anonymous postings calling for a sick-out on Griffin's message board nwaflightattendants.com during the request for a temporary restraining order. These messages were usually followed by urgings from Griffin that participants not advocate illegal activities.
Griffin, a veteran Northwest flight attendant, was forced to surrender his Packard Bell desktop and Fujitsu laptop to investigators from the firm of Ernst & Young last week. The two examiners flew to Hawaii from their Washington DC and Texas offices to confiscate the machines. Afterwards Griffin said, "I didn't think they had the right to come and get your home computer."
Jon Austin, a spokesman for Northwest, defended the search, saying, "In the age we live in, the normal course of discovery includes taking depositions, producing documents and these days more than ever looking into the content of computers. So many documents and communications these days are purely electronic in nature," he said.
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