&quot;why are these laws never symmetric?&quot;<p>They are, in a cooperative company, that is, in a company owned by their workers, it is symmetric and transparent.<p>In a company that is owned by someone else, obviously this someone else decide what is done in the company.<p>&quot;Why can&#x27;t employees also access things possessed and used by the employer, like, say, HR personnel files, or executive emails, so that employees can verify the company is not committing fraud, engaging in discriminatory practices, etc.?&quot;<p>Some employees have access to such information on any company, but those employees are trusted by the owner.<p>Employees are not saints. If a design of a prototype is valued in millions of euros and they have access to it, they could have the temptation to sell it to the competition and become rich, or just compete with the original company with the info without having done the investments.<p>This is valid to anything that could be considered &quot;trade secret&quot; that if competition knows, could simply destroy your company. Information like geomineral prospective studies that took millions of dollars to make in the end is so simple like &quot;here there are so many tons of gold or platinum&quot;. With this info in a phrase a competitor could save millions.<p>You can extract all the info you want about a company if you have access to their private communications.