Surveillance in the Workplace   Term Paper ID:31256 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Considers the issue of employee privacy, reasons for and against surveillance, legal and ethical consequences.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Considers the issue of employee privacy, reasons for and against surveillance, legal and ethical consequences. Describes various means and technology employed in gathering and retaining surveilled information. Paper Introduction: Surveillance in the Workplace Introduction Employers have long been concerned about how to improve productivityin the workplace Unions were formed in part to ensure that workersreceived regular breaks and rest periods but many employers assume thattheir employees do not work at maximum productivity all of the time Withthe increased dependence of the business world on the Internet employersare concerned that employees are surfing the Web on company time andcertainly this assumption is correct in some cases Just as companiesworked out rules for Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Employer liability for violence in the workplace has increased inrecent years, as well. This project represents the surveillance offoreign companies, although some Americans may be included in thatsurveillance. Pitfalls of Echelon In the post-9/11 world in which we now find ourselves, critics ofEchelon have expanded their concerns. In Massachusetts, the court held that even in the absence of awritten policy, the employer's interest would "probably trump" theemployee's expectation of privacy (Crowley & Aviza A7). In one particularly well-publicized situation,Raytheon Company subpoenaed a number of Internet service providers in aneffort to identify employees who posted proprietary information in publicchat areas on the Internet. "The 'Snoopervision' Debate." Supervision (Aug 1999): 3-5.Rice, Valerie. However, employees have increasingly fewer rights with regard to privacyin the workplace (including having personal lockers searched by theiremployer) (Ramsey 5). Just as companiesworked out rules for the personal use of telephones, copiers and otheroffice equipment, so they need to work out processes for Internet access.Some employers go beyond this, however, and track the individual keystrokesthat employees enter on their computers, or log the Web sites visited byemployees. Typically, such collection and retentionoccurs automatically as part of a company's backup schedule in which allfiles on a system are copied in case of system failure. Employers can also monitor the Web sites that employees are visiting.Increasingly, Internet sites are making this easier to do since they ofteninstall "cookies" on the computers which access individual sites, ormaintain a history file. One of the most controversial, and invasive, methods of computermonitoring is reading the e-mail which comes into and which leaves anorganization. If theymake personal phone calls or send personal e-mail, such actions can helpthe employees maintain a high level of morale resulting in betterperformance throughout the rest of the day. However, companies often wait until there areother indications--including complaints from supervisors or other employees--that an employee is abusing the company's resources ("GAO Investigates"7). Numerous companieshave found that installing cameras (even fake cameras) pointed atrefrigerators in lunchrooms can greatly decrease the number of employeelunch thefts. At this time, the benefits of Echelon asa tool for industrial espionage have been greatly overshadowed by thebenefits that it offers as a tool for combating terrorism. In addition, state statutes can have a significant impact onthe type of information which can be obtained by employers prior to anapplicant's hiring (Green 133). Ifcompanies do decide to monitor their employees, they need to work inconjunction with legal advisors in order to devise a system and a policywhich protects them against potential liability in the future. Those who have particularly harsh or strict guidelinesshould make all job applicants aware of the guidelines as well since itwill affect their decision whether or not to take the job. As a whole, the industry has made stridestoward encouraging only licensed versions of software. It is also possible to determine ifemployees try to visit such sites in the event that they are blocked. The invasion of privacy that thisproject represents is, according to these critics, the overriding factorthat commercial considerations cannot justify. Few companies have the resource capability required to monitor allincoming and outgoing e-mails or Internet access. "Electronic Investigations." Corporate Counsel 9(Aug 2 2): A7-A8.Davies, Phil. Supporters of Echelon maintain that the privacy issues raised areovershadowed by the potential of the project to yield valuable informationabout terrorism, fraudulent financial transactions, pedophiles, and otherillegal activities. The greater argument against employee monitoring is that it can have adeleterious effect on employee morale. This violence has increased inrecent years, and employers are increasingly considered to be liable forviolence which occurs at their work sites. In this way, it ispossible that surveillance for industrial espionage purposes could beconducted without the employees'-or the employer's-knowledge. Surveillance, particularly video surveillance, can also be justifiedby employers who argue that the mere presence of video cameras can preventtheft both from the company and from other employees. Telephone monitoring is also becoming increasingly common.Telemarketers and customer support personnel are often well aware thattheir phone calls may be monitored, and those who call these individualsare used to the warning that their conversation may be monitored in orderto ensure better customer service. Background According to a study by the General Accounting Office (GAO), companiesroutinely collect and retain transmission information as part of theirnormal business activities. J. "Walking the Line Between Violence Prevention and Employee Privacy." HRMagazine (Oct 15, 1999): 132-133."How the West Spies on Asian Telecoms." Telecom Asia 15(Jun 2 4): 1 ."IT Tackles Crime." Africa News Service. Inaddition, although former president Jimmy Carter and current New Yorksenator Hillary Rodham Clinton have both been targeted by Echelonmonitoring, the National Security Agency could justify "spying" on theseAmericans by suggesting that the information was gathered accidentallyalong with other international-and legal-information on foreigners. In this situation, the ethical argument can be made that thepolicy (and the consequences of violating the policy) should be the samefor all employees regardless of their position in the organization. One of the primary areas ofconcern is that software is being used effectively, but also that softwareis used by the right people within the organization. Conclusion Employee monitoring is an issue which is likely to increase, notdecrease, in importance as additional tools become available to employers.It will be up to each employer to determine whether monitoring makes sensein their environment, and if so, to what level and for what purpose. The most comprehensive of this type of monitoring trackseach and every keystroke and mouse click that a user inputs from theirpersonal computer or workstation. Recognizing that this is a large undertaking, it is notsurprising that the National Security Agency (NSA) is apparentlyresponsible for Echelon. "Big Brother is Watching." PC Week (Sep 13, 1999): 83.Tomeo, Melba. In these situations, thetheory is that the employer knew, or should have known, that there was apropensity for violence (Green 132). However, some softwareprograms may be used by only a few people and companies are eager to trackdown unused software so that they can reduce their MIS costs in the future. In these situations, companies areable to decrease their asset cost and improve their competitive position byoffering appropriate and timely training to their employees. These employees (and their advocates) suggest thatemployers are better off seeking to monitor performance rather thankeystrokes, and results rather than phone calls (Ramsey 4). Depending on the weight that onegives the Echelon project, the government may also be engaged insurveillance in the workplace, ostensibly to provide information toAmerican companies to help them be competitive, but also possibly fornational security reasons. Unions were formed in part to ensure that workersreceived regular breaks and rest periods, but many employers assume thattheir employees do not work at maximum productivity all of the time. However, such monitoring can also beused to track whether personal phone calls are being made, and whether theemployee is offering defamatory or even simple negative information aboutthe company or its products (Deck 6). The Echelon Project The Echelon Project is rumored to monitor all e-mail, telephoneconversations and fax transmission in Europe and elsewhere in the world(Connolly 62). In companies where security is also an issue, cameras may beused to monitor activities by employees. Some companiesretain such data for long periods of time, while others destroy data aftera short time--sometimes as short as three days ("GAO Investigates" 7). "Prying Eyes." Computer User 19(May 2 1): 27-29.Deck, Stewart. As a result ofthis, companies are now regularly purchasing multiple licenses for theirnetworks and installing software enterprise-wide. Of perhaps greater concern is the surveillance of employees by foreigngovernments. "Right to Privacy?" School Library Journal 49(Aug 2 3): 68-69. Game sites, adult sites and similar sites (sometimes includingauction sites) can all be blocked without knowing whether employees areactually visiting those sites. Some critics of monitoringnote that such monitoring tends to take place at the lowest levels of theorganization, and that management is typically excluded from themonitoring. Such broad-basedsnooping is not likely to catch terrorists, according to these critics, butwill have a chilling effect on the very democracies that Echelon apparentlyis designed to protect (Nesselson 27). Suchstatements are generally signed by the employees and have been used incases in order to establish that employees have been informed that thecompany retains the right to examine communications that are originated orpassed on using company equipment. Companies have long tracked long distance phone calls made byemployees on company phones in order to recover the costs from employees.For many companies, this is a simple way to let employees know that whilepersonal phone calls are permitted (even long distance ones), the employeeis expected to exercise reasonable judgment and to pay the company for thecall after it is completed. Video surveillance is not new to the workplace, and has beencommonplace in a variety of settings. This is particularly true sincemost employees consider that their performance should be the overridingstandard against which they are judged, and if they write personal e-mailor make personal phone calls, but they still get their job done (or staylate on those occasions when they have spent time on personal business),the personal business they conduct on so-called company time should simplybe a non-issue. Many employers have concluded that performance is, indeed, theonly yardstick which matters in the workplace, and that employees arefundamentally interested in doing the best job they possibly can. However, Echelon had its genesis not as a weapon for fightingterrorism, but rather as an industrial espionage tool. Critics of the project maintain that the Echelon Project, designed toprovide industrial espionage to companies of "friendly" countries, cannotbe justified from a moral standpoint. Although Americans are apparently protected from suchsurveillance when conducted by the American government, it is not clearthat such protections extend to other governments. Legal Considerations The critical legal point regarding Echelon is whether it is used tomonitor the communications of Americans. In addition, by monitoring keystrokeson a personal computer or workstation, companies are able to spot trainingissues and can provide assistance to employees in order to help themimprove the ways in which they perform their tasks (Rice 83). Increasingly common is the use of computer-based monitoring inthe workplace. This research considers the reasons that haveled to this loss of privacy, the types of surveillance that are conducted,and the legal and moral ramifications of this trend. (Feb 5, 2 2): 1 8 36u 534.Mishra, Jitendra and Suzanne Crampton. Surveillance in the Workplace Introduction Employers have long been concerned about how to improve productivityin the workplace. "Legal Thumbs-Up for Raytheon Employee Suit." Computerworld (Apr 12, 1999): 6."GAO Investigates On The Job Computer Monitoring." Fair-Employment Practices Guidelines (Feb 1, 2 3): 1, 7."Germany Endorses Strong Crypto." Wired News. Employers are also finding that they have to take steps to protecttheir employees against workplace violence. "Employee Monitoring." SAM Advanced Management Journal (Sum 1998): 4-14.Nesselson, Lisa. "Echelon Finds a Foe." InfoWorld 23(Jun 11, 2 1): 62.Cook, Julie. Since most employees who access the Internet doso across a network, the electronic "footprint" that they leave behind canbe substantial and enough for an MIS professional to determine if employeesare visiting sites which are inappropriate, or if they are spending "toomuch" time surfing the Internet. Criticscharge the Echelon now monitors any mention of "nuclear," or "terrorism" orrelated words in e-mails and other forms of communication, and that themere mention of the Echelon project itself may be enough to have one's nameand electronic information put on a "list somewhere" so that one'selectronic movements are monitored by the government. In these cases, the Internet serviceproviders have maintained that they are required to supply suchinformation, and that individuals who engage in unlawful conduct(defamatory speech as opposed to merely expressing an opinion) do so attheir own risk and without protection from possible tort action (Deck 6). At this point, lawsvary from state to state and even from locality to locality. Financial transactions,travel arrangements and related information that could be linked toterrorist activities can be identified and tracked, according toproponents. "Echelon: The Secret Power." Variety 39 (Apr 21, 2 3): 27.Ramsey, Robert D. Collecting data for the purposes ofindustrial espionage, including taking avionics and electronics contractsfrom France, is difficult to justify from a moral standpoint, but under thethreat of terrorism, even more privacy rights are being eroded. In addition, companies arefinding that workplace violence is particularly expensive: according toone study, more than 1.7 million work days are lost each year due toviolence at the workplace, and more than $55 million in lost wages.Homicide is the leading cause of death for women in the workplace, and thesecond leading cause of death for men (industrial accidents are the primarycause of death for men in the workplace) (Green 132). Cases in both Massachusetts andCalifornia have supported the employers' contention that employees had noexpectation of privacy, and in the California case, that extended to acomputer provided by the company to the employee for use at home as part ofhis job. Or, thecompany might determine that employees are not as well-trained in the useof software as they could be, and that they need additional training inorder to make them more proficient. Retrieved from the Internet 1 Dec 2 4 <>Green, Ronald M. Employers who use thisrationale argue that electronic monitoring is merely the next step frommonitoring employees' at their desks visually (determining whether they arereading the newspaper, doing crossword puzzles, or otherwise engaging inbehaviors which are not productive. "Big Brother Goes to Work." OfficeSystems99 (Aug 1999): 43- 45.Crowley, Michael J., & Christian Aviza. Although employers are reluctant to admit the motive, they areincreasingly using monitoring techniques to pursue employees who might bedefaming the organization. The Fair CreditReporting Act was recently amended to place greater restrictions on theability of employers to obtain investigative consumer reports on employeesand applicants (some employers rely on these reports to provide informationabout employees who may be having financial troubles and who thus may belikely to engage in theft or embezzlement, or other types of illegalbehavior). Benefits of Echelon Proponents of Echelon maintain that if the program exists-and itsexistence is still officially not confirmed by the American government-itoffers considerable benefit in intercepting electronic data that could helpprevent additional attacks on the United States. Moral/Ethical Considerations The greater consideration for many employers and employees alike arethe moral and ethical considerations which accompany a decision to "spy" onemployees. Works CitedConnolly, P. When companies seek to justify employee monitoring, they sometimescite the fact that by monitoring employees, they can determine whetherassets are being allocated appropriately. When Owens & Minor, a distributioncompany, implemented a keystroke monitoring system, it opted to use akeystroke monitoring system which permits it to review how employees areusing their personal computers and the various software programs availableto them. Employees are reluctant to give up software, or may anticipate that theywill have a need for a particular piece of software that they actually donot need. So long as the project onlytargets foreigners, no warrant is needed to monitor communications. Types of Monitoring There are various types of electronic monitoring which can be used ata company. Legal Ramifications Legally, the courts have held that employers have the right to monitoremployees' actions, including eavesdropping on phone calls, reading e-mailand putting up video cameras. Employers who are seeking to implement a monitoringprogram need to put their policies in writing and inform all employees ofthe policies. Moral arguments can be made that the potential benefitto many-such as preventing a violent terrorist attack-or the prevention ofidentity theft and other financial fraud, outweighs the privacy issues thatare raised by critics of Echelon ("IT Tackles" 1 8 36u 534). At one time, employer liability was limited to actsthat occurred within the course and scope of employment. Large companies mighthave the resources required to use "sniffer" programs to filter certainmessages--including bulk e-mails--or use programs that block access toobjectionable Web sites. Even when concerns such asterrorism are brought into the conversation, critics of the projectmaintain that Echelon is an example of destroying the very thing-privacyand individual freedoms-that proponents claim the project is trying tosave. However, critics of this technique arguethat employers should base their decisions on employee performance, notmonitoring, and that reading an employee's e-mail is tantamount tolistening to an employee's phone conversations despite the good intentionof the employer. This was never actually proved, since theprogram itself has only been admitted to by Australia and New Zealand, butit remains an interesting point. Because of the secrecy that surrounds Echelon, there is no dataon whether the partners in Echelon have exchanged information in thismanner, but critics of the project maintain that if the technology and thelegal framework are both in place to allow this to happen, it is like tohappen at some point (Davies 28). By monitoring the software that an employee actually uses, andthe ways in which the employee uses it, companies hope to be able to reducetheir long-term costs (Rice 83). Many employees have assumed that their e-mail was personalin much the same way that personal mail sent through the United PostalService is personal and protected (employers can eavesdrop on employeephone calls, and may monitor the phone numbers that are being dialed), butcourts have ruled otherwise (Cook 43). Because of the potential liability associated with employers withregard to workplace violence, employers are increasingly motivated to findout as much as possible about employees prior to hiring them as well asduring their tenure with a particular organization. Nonetheless,there is considerable benefit to be gained by those companies that benefitfrom data gathered by the program (Tomeo 68). Employers are advised to adopt both aprivacy policy and a telephone/e-mail policy prior to taking these steps,and to ensure that everyone in the organization understands these policies. Some companies have taken pre-emptive steps with regard to Web surfingand simply blocked employees from going to sites based on certainparameters. Raytheon filed suit in order to learn theidentity of 21 "John Does" from their Internet service providers, andPhoenix International also sought to learn the identities of chat roomparticipants that the company claimed caused the stock price to fall whenthey posted defamatory information. Thereis also a legal consideration in that while the constitution of the UnitedStates prohibits gathering information about American citizens withoutwarrants, in most cases, foreign governments are certainly not hampered inthe same way. Legal experts have typically advised companies to draft comprehensivestatements regarding the expectation of privacy and the right of thecompany to examine any data on any company-issued equipment. Some employers use computer monitoring to track whether employees areusing the various software programs that are installed on their personalcomputers and workstations. These supporters use the September 11 attacks, which were co-ordinated outside the United States to some degree, as reason to supportthe continued secret use of Echelon ("How the West" 1 ). In other situations, installing cameras or other monitoringtechnology has resulted in a decrease in employee theft, or an increase inproductivity (as when a notice that e-mail is being monitored results in asharp decline in the number of e-mail messages being sent from the company,suggesting that personal e-mail messages have sharply declined) (Mishra &Crampton 3). As with other types of monitoring,employers protest that monitoring employee e-mail can help determine that aparticular employee might be planning to carry out violent acts within theworkplace, or may indicate that an employee is using the computer networkfor excessive personal tasks. Although long distance rates have declinedsignificantly in recent years, the ability to use an employer's commercialdiscount on long distance calls (even though the employee would have toreimburse the company later) was long considered one a perquisite ofworking for a large organization. Video surveillance cameras have longbeen installed in banks and convenience stores where their primary purposeis to provide documentation in case of criminal acts by outsiders.However, such cameras can also be used to monitor the actions of individualemployees (one security camera documenting a robbery also showed a bankteller short changing customers during the time leading up to the robbery)and to document when employees from one part of a building might be"wandering"--either on purpose or by accident, in a part of the buildingwhere they do not belong (Mishra & Crampton 6). However,judgments have resulted in companies being cited for negligent hiring andretention practices that place liability on employers when the violenceoccurs outside the normal scope of employment. Those who favorstrict monitoring of employee communications maintain that since thecommunication uses the company's resources, the communication belongs tothe company and thus the company has the right to monitor the communicationat any point in the process without advance notification to the employee.Those who advocate for employee privacy maintain that employees have anexpectation of privacy with regard to e-mail and Internet "surfing," andthat without other reason to look at an employee's communication, merelyusing company equipment is not sufficient (Ramsey 3). It was increasinglysuspected that the United States government was providing informationgleaned from Echelon to companies in order to provide them with a distinctadvantage in the marketplace. Increasingly, individuals are losing theirprivacy in the workplace. Thus the partners in Echelon-including Canada, Australia,the United Kingdom and New Zealand-could collect information on Americancitizens. Withthe increased dependence of the business world on the Internet, employersare concerned that employees are surfing the Web on company time, andcertainly this assumption is correct in some cases. Reasons for Employee Monitoring One of the key reasons given for monitoring employees electronicallyis to improve employee productivity (Rice 83). Critics point out, however, that keystroke monitoring can alsohelp employers to "listen in" on an employees' word processing program, anddetermine whether the employee is writing a personal letter or a businessproposal (Rice 83). Reasons Against Employee Monitoring Despite the strong reasons that employers have provided in favor ofemployee monitoring, privacy advocates argue that monitoring violates therights of employees to privacy, and that the right to privacy extends evento the workplace. These supporters maintainthat Echelon is able to pull together information from many differentcountries across a broad variety of sources. Australia, Great Britain and New Zealand are the othercountries said to participate in the Echelon Project. For example, acompany may find that although it has purchased software licenses forMicrosoft Access, only a few of the people who have the licenses actuallyuse the software, and of those, perhaps another program on their computer(such as Microsoft Excel) would prove sufficient to their needs. As is often the case, technology has moved faster than society'sability to create a legal and ethical frame of reference. 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