Swiss court upholds WhatsApp secrecy in case of fired staffer

NEW DELHI: A

Swiss

company must pay a worker it

fired

over WhatsApp messages in which she criticised her boss, a Swiss court has ruled, saying the firm violated her right to privacy by illegally inspecting the chats.


The Zurich Upper Court upheld a lower labour court ruling in deciding the company, whose name was not made public, inappropriately opened the chats and made copies of them during a

routine check

of employees’ business mobile phones for defects and unauthorised software. The firm must pay the fired worker more than 25,000 Swiss francs ($25,345). “Specific chats were opened... without getting consent,” the court said. “It should be noted that a WhatsApp chat between two people... is missing elements that lend it the character of public communication.”