Well, we all must admit there's no right to much privacy in any organization we don't own. But enlightened administrators would dare pry into such things as e-mail only when it's absolutely essential and urgent. Otherwise, they operate essentially on trust. Now, some states -- including Virginia -- have forbidden all employees and state university faculty from accessing porn forums etc. from their desks. It remains to be seen how this will be enforced, but no doubt there is a way to do some random checking of records. We randomly check our long distance billings. Once, in another museum, I found our head of security was returning nights and Sundays to call his mother long-distance, speaking hours at a time. He had no idea we got printouts of all calls, their length, etc. I had the difficult job of firing him for misuse of government phones over a period of 2-3 yrs, along with his general behavior toward other staff. When Reagan visited the museum, he refused to recommend 2-3 staff for clearance and they couldn't be on the grounds! That's when I began checking the phone records.