Business Law

Electronic Surveillance of Employees

Melody McIntosh

Professor Dwight T. Elliott

Law, Ethics, and Corporate Governance - Leg500

January 23, 2011

Electronic Surveillance of Employees 1

1) Explain where an employee can reasonably expect to have privacy in the workplace.

When it comes to employment, many employees privacy rights are granted by specific laws,

rules, and/or regulations. For example, there are laws that create a right to privacy in

Employees’ personnel records, the use and maintenance of employee social security numbers,

employee medical information, background screening, and the like. But what about cases in

which there is no specific statute or code that creates a right to privacy? New technologies

make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees’ jobs, especially on

telephones, computer terminals, through electronic and voice mail, and when employees are

using the internet. Such monitoring is virtually unregulated. Therefore, unless company policy

specifically states otherwise (and even this is not assured), the employer can listen, watch, and

read most of employees’ workplace communications. [ (Workplace Privacy Employee monitoring, 2010) ]

Employers may spy on their employees in those ways and then some, because they have the

right to protect their buildings, office equipment and such. Subsequently, security legally

trumps employee rights in the workplace. “Employers provide employees with access to its

computers, e-mail and internet services in order to facilitate business communications; the

intended use of these technologies. Therefore, when an employee use the employers’

technologies for another purpose, courts have dealt with these issues as one might expect.” [ (Glover, 1996) ]

Most surveilling employers notify employees that “Big Brother” is watching, but to put that

another way, not all of them do. It’s likely that...