Electronic Surveillance

Electronic Surveillance 2

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

In order to examine where an employee can reasonably expect to have privacy in the workplace then one must define what privacy is to people. Basically privacy is a right that individuals have to protect their personal information whether written or verbal. According to PG.com privacy is protecting your personally identifiable information (PII). For example, PII can be your name, address, and/ or phone number; also gender, social security number and/or birth date when used in combination with that information. So an employee would expect for all of those things to be kept private in the workplace.

Because America lacks a comprehensive standard protecting privacy then private sector employers have the right to keep surveillance on an employee for business purposes. “Privacy law is determined by a variety of federal and state statutes and by the common law of torts.”

(Halbert /Ingulli p74) So Mr. Herman in the video was secretly listening to his salespersons conversations on the sales floor to make sure they were giving out correct information to his potential clients. He didn’t want his dealership to be viewed as employing corrupt salespeople.

The salespeople can claim that there is an “intrusion” on their privacy when Mr. Herman listens to their conversation without letting them know that they could be monitored. This intrusion is a variation on the tort of invasion of privacy. (Halbert /Ingulli p74)

Electronic Surveillance 3

2. Explain whether it makes a difference if an employee is in an open area or in an enclosed office in regards to privacy.

Most employees feel that there is more privacy in an enclosed office versus in an open area. Studies show that while closed offices can provide visual separations, they are no guarantee of audio privacy. In fact, they may provide a false sense of security when people should...