Nokia has submitted a proposed law in Finland allowing them to be able to legally monitor incoming and outgoing emails of their employees in order to determine who are leaking trade secrets. The proposed bill is dubbed Lex Nokia.
It’s been a common practice by some Nokia employees to leak out details and photos of products yet to be released/announced. Nokia believes the product leaks put a negative impact on all the efforts made by the Finnish company.
In a blog post at the Nokia Conversations website, the Finland-based company admitted that the Nokia E71 is their most leaked product ever.
It adds that these breaches of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that specifically state that pre-launch information is property of Nokia and cannot be revealed outside the company. The proposed bill (Lex Nokia) would evidently help curb that problem.
It is said that the mobile giant is threatening to leave Finland if the bill is not passed, leaving some 16,000 employees and over 1.3 billion euros in annual tax revenues. Nokia representatives deny this in a recent interview posted at Yahoo! News.
{translated from IDG Sweden}
i agree with jay, this is in part also a violation of an employee’s privacy.