The Spanish Supreme Court has ruled that it was lawful to dismiss an employee for using her work computer for personal purposes.
The Court found that as the employer had a clear policy in place which stated that employees were not permitted to use work computers for personal reasons then the employee could not maintain that she had any right of privacy in respect to the use of company IT systems.
This decision is a departure from previous case law where employees were found to have a fundamental right to privacy. The crucial difference in this case was that the employer had in place a clear no-tolerance policy.