I’ve had some interesting conversations with folks from North America in the past about how different regions in the world have different laws. You might come up with a corporate “acceptable IT usage policy” over in New York but that document’s restrictions or contents might be completely illegal in somewhere like Germany or Italy, even if the employee has to sign it in order to keep/get a job.
I picked those countries because of my experience in running a multinational system that included offices there. We had to set up proxy services just for them that had no content logging. We also had different rules for PC’s in Germany so that admins could only log into them with the user’s permission!!!
I just saw another example of how things are different. We all know how people who are recruiting will google for the person they are looking at. I do it. I once found that a candidate was a raving loony Nazi. That and his “I want to kill everyone” demeanor in the interview put us wa-ay off him. Silicon Republic has published an article that reports on Germany considering a new law to ban recruiters from looking up candidates for jobs in personal social networking sites such as Facebook (a common practice). They will be able to use LinkedIn. I have no idea how this can be enforced – considering that you can’t log web activity on the proxy in Germany!
As always, consult the appropriate legal experts in the remote region before applying some law that is fine in your own jurisdiction.