Deploying an enterprise-class e-mail-archiving product, such as Enterprise Vault, may pose some technical challenges, but having such a system in place also could result in far costly organizational, political and legal challenges.

Although enterprise e-mail managers have always had the ability to snoop on other people’s messages, a tool such as Symantec’s Enterprise Vault (EV) take this capability to a whole new level. EV offers the capability to search deep into messages across every user in the enterprise.

In the past, the capability to read other people’s e-mail required special expertise facilitated by special access via an administrative password. With such tools as EV, the whole reason to go to the time, expense and effort is that you fully intend to read other people’s mail.

A general problem with these tools facilitated by the compliance and auditing measures built into them is the obvious ability of the enterprise IT personnel to violate the privacy of employees. The U.S. legal framework generally conveys permission to an employer to monitor outbound e-mail and, in fact, may make monitoring compulsory in certain environments. The combination of normal expectations of courtesy and privacy and an all-seeing tool that looks at every e-mail message, sets up a tension in the workplace, even in organizations with a very pro-employee privacy policy, which must be carefully managed.