That equipment is not her personal property and there is no reasonable expectation of privacy while using it. Anything that might be logged while “monitoring” their own kit is a perfectly legal procedure.

However, as is implied by the wording of this article – her boss seems to have taken information gathered during that monitoring and then used it to subsequently access a system owned by a third party. THAT is where he crossed the line. By using a password that might have been captured from their own system to access another system – her boss fraudulently accessed that system – pretending to be her.

That is a Crime. ANYONE accessing any computer system and masquerading as another person is committing the crime of fraud – as well as a number of hacking-related statutes.

Her boss may have FELT that he needed to act in order to ascertain if she had stolen trade-secrets, etc.. However by taking action he became a vigilante. The only proper course of action was to divulge any internal logs to Law Enforcement and to issue Cease & Desist letters through their own attourneys.

Privacy IS a legal RIGHT in the USA. It may not have been included in the original draft of the constitution explicetly however it was established through the use of the court systems decades ago. The erosion of a citizen’s Rights in order to secure the interests of Corporations flirts with Facism.

The article fails to mention if any actual dammage was rendered TO the offending company in addition to that rendered BY them.