Precedent setting and a good case study in the limitations of privacy in employee emails.

In fact, the statement continued, “no ones emails were opened and the contents of no one’s emails were searched by human or machine,” and the search was limited to “a partial log of the metadata – the name of the sender and the time the emails were sent.” 

via Harvard Secretly Searched Campus Emails in Internal Investigation | Mashable

Harvard University administrators secretly searched deans’ email accounts, hunting for media leak | Boston.com

“News of the incident could nonetheless anger Harvard faculty members, whose privacy in electronic records is protected under a Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy.

“Resident deans are not professors, but they teach. At issue is how much privacy they should expect.”

It further said that Smith – a computer scientist with expertise on privacy issues — “would agree entirely with taking steps that found the right balance between our needs to respect the privacy of our employees and to protect the privacy of our students.”