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On September 5, 2017, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights reversed a chamber decision and ruled in Bărbulescu v. Romania that monitoring and employee’s electronic communications was a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life, the home and correspondence) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The applicant had been fired from a private company in Romania in 2007 after the company informed him that they had monitored the Yahoo Messenger account that he had set up to assist clients and found his personal conversations with his brother and fiancé. According to the press release, although employees were aware of a policy against using company property for private use, the national courts did not determine whether the applicant had received notice that his communications might be monitored, nor had they determined the reasons justifying the monitoring or whether there were less intrusive means of doing so. The Court therefore determined “that the national authorities had not adequately protected Mr Bărbulescu’s right to respect for his private life and correspondence. They had consequently failed to strike a fair balance between the interests at stake.”