Tue bar is actually quite high. Teo things can block it: if there is a workers council, it has to approve surveillance of an employees use of IT systems. That surveillance can only be target to specific, named users and for specific purposes, almost like a mini search warrant. If there is no workers council, at the latest stage a court will have a very, very close look at what isbpresented as evidence. The middle ground is an affected employee's lawyer and the employer. Result being, that kind of comms / IT surveillance is basically never happeneing. Which is a very, very good thing!

You need to be specific about what legal jurisdiction you're talking about here then - the world is a very big place and different laws apply.

I'm not aware of any EU wide laws that prevent what you're talking about here. In the UK an employment contract will state that the employer can monitor your activity if they need to and this is completely legal.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/monitoring-work-workers-rights

In some countries (Germany springs to mind) there are much stricter rules. A blanket statement like the one you've made here is not correct unless you're being very specific about where you're talking about.

Germany it is, should have mentioned that.

this was way before gdpr. more like employee rights. employer cant just come by and snoop throu your drawers either.