Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace

once again brought to light the various concerns and complaints that this contentious area inevitably generates.  The idea of monitoring employees’ conversations has a certain Orwellian darkness that encourages accusations of privacy invasion and corporate spying.  Indeed, some companies have taken this too far – some reportedly even requesting their employee’s Facebook login details.  However, by and large the concept of employee monitoring – when done appropriately – seems to me to be relatively

Did you know that 58% of employers have fired workers for Internet and email misuse? And 48% justify employee video monitoring as an effort to “counter theft and violence?” According to the “2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey” of which 304 U.S. companies participated in, computer-monitoring results have led to the highest cause of employee termination. These companies used several tactics to eavesdrop on employees while claiming to be managing productivity or for security purposes. Some argue that surveillance is absolutely necessary to help protect and grow a business; others argue that employee and customer rights come first. However, companies that use such tactics often violate the privacy of individuals, exploit their private information and even punish those that do not conform to their standards.

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

In Brian Trent’s article, Technology and Tomorrow: A Challenge to Liberty, Trent describes how electronic surveillance has increased and how it will continue to spread amongst people. In Craig Silverman’s article, Smile, Big Brother’s watching, Silverman explains that the amount of time and surveillance that corporations conduct over employees is increasing, but having some negative effects. Both of these articles explain how electronic surveillance will increase so much, that almost everyone will be able to be seen when not in the open [monitored]. In this essay I’ll be going more in depth to describe both articles and I’ll explain whether I agree with their arguments and why.

This policy, as obliged by the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW), deals with the three key forms of surveillance. Surveillance in this context can be defined as the close observation of employees in the work; which may constitute in any of

The government can listen into phone calls, the red light cameras that they have can trace a car, and not only can they listen in on your cars, but they can also get the exact pinpoint location of your cell phone. As for people’s jobs, this quote explains just exactly what they do, “A 2000 study of human resources professionals at more than seven hundred companies revealed that 74 percent of employers monitor workers' Internet use at work; 72 percent check their employees' e-mails; and 51 percent review employees' phone calls.” (Introduction, 2) With that being said, it is clear that not only at home can your privacy be invaded, but at work also, and even while you are in your

E-mail has rapidly become a staple of the modern office. Currently, two-thirds of employees in medium and large companies in the United States now have Internet access, compared with fifteen percent only two years ago. The availability of e-mail allows for messages to be widely and rapidly distributed, improving efficiency and reducing cost. In addition to being one of the components of the new workplace, e-mail is also the center of a hot privacy debate. Part of this is because, unlike regular mail, which is difficult to monitor, e-mail can be scanned with ease, allowing employers to engage in monitoring at an unprecedented rate, and raising the specter of a workplace free of privacy. As this relatively new technology gains ever increasing prevalence, certain questions

Technological surveillance is used in a wide field of areas from wiretapping, hacking, bugging, electronic tracking, video surveillance and so on, but, “when used by the government, technological surveillance creates a particularly dramatic threat to the privacy of individual citizens” (p. 354), although this is uncertain to the government if it is indeed goes against citizen’s privacy. Technology advances so quickly, that the law cannot keep up with the swift changes.

Governments have greatly increased the amount of surveillance used and have thus created a way to gather an astonishing amount of personal data on its citizens. Surveillance technologies have become more sophisticated with the growing demand for surveillance in society. The use of this technology is not limited to only the government with some of the most sophisticated surveillance devices also made available to the public. With global terrorist attacks such as 9/11

The main argument made by The Week Staff in their text “The Rise of Workplace Spying”, is that modern technology has greatly expanded employee analysis in companies. More specifically, The Week Staff argues that companies are utilizing software programs to scan employee’s accounts, computer fields and the employee’s efficiency in their job. The Week Staff address, “Henry Ford famously paced the factory floor with a stopwatch, timing his worker’s motion in a bid for greater efficiency. He also hired private investigators to spy on employees’ home lives to make sure personal problems didn’t interfere with their work performance” In this passage, The Week Staff is suggesting that companies are trying

Surveillance involves the monitoring of a person, place or object to obtain certain information or to alter or control the behaviour of the subject of the surveillance. Surveillance can be covert or overt, and can be conducted by a variety of individuals, agencies or organisations for different reasons. However, it is known that as technology expands, sensitive issues expand alongside or perhaps beyond certain limits. For surveillance, the Intrusive issues fall under covert surveillance off course, the surveillance that is carried out in relation to anything taking place on residential premises or in any private

This is dangerous because the American government can gain access to this information, and thus can potentially infringe upon the public’s privacy. Interfaces such as Google and Microsoft allocate customized advertisements through the correlations of individuals’ search trends (Privacy Policy – Privacy & Terms – Google). Microsoft’s Hotmail system employs the same method by monitoring their consumers’ emails (Pender 2010). This trend is also popular among the workplace as some companies are starting to watch their employees email and web browsing habits, and through surveillance devices (Workplace Cameras and Surveillance: Rules for Employers). Counteracting the invasive effects of surveillance on individuals civil liberties, many positive outcomes have derived from these installations. For instance, surveillance devices have aided in crime conviction and terrorism prevention, because they provide facial recognition through the usage of closed-circuit television cameras (Harris), and high-tech systems like the Echelon are able to detect communications between electronic devices, so the plans and activities of terrorists are nipped in the bud before terrorist attacks occur– if their networks are be revealed by analyzing the patterns of their communication with the Echelon system (Poole). Although there are positive aspects to surveillance, the intrinsic inequalities in the distribution of surveillance still exists and can only be eradicated through the establishment of transparent society (Brin

Workplace surveillance can provide a detailed view of the workplace and provide the information of the workers about what they are doing during the work hours. The monitoring of the workers violates their right to privacy. Even though, the employers use it as it is their liability to check if all the workers are devoting their time to work in an ethical way. By reviewing academic studies about workplace violations and the rights to privacy associated with workplace surveillance, this paper will examine the workplace relationships and the illegal use of surveillance that results in violations of employees’ rights to privacy. In this paper, I will argue that although workplace

Workplace surveillance has become a controversial issue in the workplace environment. The technological surveillance has developed as a necessity, it doesn’t only help in monitoring what the workers’ do, but it also helps to know how they do it. The modern technological development may have helped the employers’ to have an aerial view of the workplace environment, but it has created a controversy between the employees’ and the employer about the employees’ right to privacy being violated. The employees’ believe the act of workplace surveillance to be hateful that violates their right to privacy and liberties. The surveillance at the workplace often effects workers mental health, productivity, future success in their work and their relationship with the employer, despite being a necessity for the employers’ to protect themselves against the liability, many employers’ in the process of achieving efficiency through surveillance mistakenly ruin their relationship with their employees. The workplace surveillance is helpful in improving the performance of workers or it is contributing towards degrading the performance of workers and their work relationships.

It has been proved that computers help a business ease its activities such as record keeping, monitoring employees and word processing among others. However, the use of computers in the workplace breeds concerns such as security threats and privacy issues. Computer systems are not only prone to hackers but also other security issues that may compromise the company’s activities and social integrity. The research will probe into some of the advantages and disadvantages of computer surveillance.