- Workplace privacy
Employees typically must relinquish some of their privacy while at the workplace, but how much they must do so can be a contentious issue. Employers might choose to monitor employees activities using
surveillance cameras , or may wish to record employees activities while using company owned computers or telephones. [ [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance.htm Howstuffworks "How Workplace Surveillance Works" ] ] [ [http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/2001/10/18/sinrod.htm Electronic surveillance in the workplace ] ]Europe
The EU Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data limits and regulates the collection of personal information on individuals, including workers. Firms that monitor employees' use of e-mail, the internet or phones as part of their business practice, and do not tell employees or have not obtained employee consent to do so, can in most cases be sued under Article 8 the European Convention on Human Rights which provides for the right to respect for his private and family life. On the other hand, although EU law is clear that e-mail interception is illegal, the law is not totally clear as to whether companies may prohibit employees from sending private e-mails. [Sylvia Mercado Kierkegaard (2005) Reading Your Keystroke: Whose Mail Is It? Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Publisher: Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, Volume 3592 / 2005, Chapter: p. 256]
United States
In the United States, the situation is quite different.In 2005 for example, a survey of more than 500 U.S. companies found that over half had disciplined and about one in four employers had terminated (fired) an employee for "inappropriate" use of the internet, such as sending an inappropriate e-mail message to a client or supervisor, neglecting work while chatting with friends, or viewing pornography during work hours. [ [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5697883 Surfing the Web on the Company Dime : NPR ] ]
The tools that are used for this surveillance are often caching
proxy server s that are also used for web-monitoring.ee also
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Workplace surveillance References
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