Hi Deborah,

I am in the MIS field and I can tell you that generally you sign an agreement that already allows companies to record and review any emails you send from "their" email systems.  This is nothing new and really doesn't have any real effect on the end user (you, me and the guy next door).  What it effects is the disaster recovery and archiving schemes of these companies.  If you have a hotmail, aol, yahoo, or gmail account and they allow you to access them while at work, well they are extremely difficult to record.  The truth is that there have been on numerous occasions that corporations are given a subpoena for their emails and there was a failure to produce them.  In one circumstance, Microsoft "accidentally" erased all the emails related to a particular case ( burst.com) just prior to the lawsuit being filed.  The funny thing was that it only affected the emails related to that particular case and non of the other emails that were sent during that time period.   Also, what I have seen is that a lot of company lawyers demand that NO emails be kept that are older then a certain number of months (rarely years).  This law just means that they have to keep them longer and is no more big brotherish then before this law takes effect.  Now the truth is that no company I worked for specifically scans every mailbox of it's employees.  They only do so if they suspect something is going on with the employee.  So if you are being questioned on the specific types of emails you are receiving/sending, I would start looking for another job because the company is looking for a reason to fire you.