[kwhitefoot]

Here in Norway privacy matters. Just because the laptop and email account belong to the company it doesn't mean that the boss can just rummage around in it.

For instance, many years ago I was Unix sysadmin and needed to get some work done on a machine using information that been emailed to one of my colleagues. Normally I would have just given the work to him but he was on holiday and this was urgent. The information needed was in his email but I couldn't just ransack his email. I had to ask the admin of the email system to open up that account and find the relevant email for me and copy that information. The admin in turn had to notify HR that he was doing this and justify it.

Generally all this works perfectly well.