PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE COLUMN: Here are some criteria to consider:
• If a worker only received emails and didn’t send them, is that worker less culpable than a regular forwarder?
• If a person only received dirty email, did that person open them?
• Was the employee surfing the web for porn or did he or she pass along incoming emails?
• So far, explanations have been fuzzy on whether state techs can or cannot tell if they were opened. One possible reason is these emails, dating to 2008, were reconstructed after they had been deleted.
• Quantity is an important factor. If someone received two, is he less culpable than a person who received 300?
• Is the person involved a manager or supervisor of some sort? Therein lies a key question. It seems that a manager seeing email with outrageous subject lines has a responsibility to tell employees to “knock it off.” That manager also has a responsibility to go to his or her boss and report what had been going on.
• But is a low-level employee getting emails copied to superiors obligated to stop it? Most of us would say that’s the right thing to do. But would you do it knowing that superiors and colleagues might consider you untrustworthy and retaliate in some way?
• And does sending randy emails on a private account absolve you of responsibility? Are not the emails public emails once they are in the state system? … (more)
