Surveillance of Workplaces

Privacy can be defined as a way of drawing the line at how far society can intrude into a person's affairs (Banisar, 2000)[1]. Wikipedia defines it as the ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves.[2] Simply it can be described as one’s right to have a private life, to be left alone and to be able to decide when one’s personal data is collected, used or disclosed. Personal data includes any information that can be used to identify, contact or locate you. It is the violation of an expectation of confidential information disclosed in a private place being unveiled to third parties. The Australian Privacy Charter provides that “privacy is a value which underpins to human dignity and other values such as freedom of association and speech. It is a basic human right and the reasonable expectation of every person.”[3]

In the case of R v/s Dyment, the Supreme Court of Canada tried to understand the term privacy by breaking it into different categories. The three zones of privacy have been defined as those involving territorial or geographical aspects, person related aspects and information related concerns. In this paper, we are mainly concerned with information privacy which relates to confidentiality of information about individuals. Alan Westin defined privacy in this context as ' the claim of individuals, groups or institutions to define for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others'.[4] The main concern summarized here is that employees may be denied the opportunity to define what extent of personal information about them is communicated to their employer.

Surveillance technology is not a new issue. In the past video cameras and wiretaps had left all in fear of personal privacy. What is more feared today is the breakthrough of IT, especially the surveillance technology. Balancing the fear of technology and privacy has long been a concern and a challenge for both businesses and legal authorities. In terms of e-mail privacy, Harris quoted, “What protected us, to an extent, in the past, was a wall of paper... Now electronic communication allows that wall to be penetrated very easily”.[5]

[1] Banisar, D. (2000) "Privacy and Human Rights 2000: An International Survey of Privacy Laws and Development", Privacy International.

[2] Wikipedia (2007) "Privacy".

[3] The Australian Privacy Charter Group, Law School, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, (1994) The Australian Privacy Charter.

[4] Westin, A. F. (1967) "Privacy and Freedom". Bodley Head, London.

[5] Dunn, A. (1996) "Think of Your Soul As a Market Niche". The New York Times, 11 September

The ubiquitous nature of IT makes it present everywhere and is alert every minute watching, recording and evaluating employees. Electronic mail is a technology used for communication that was developed along the evolution of the Internet. The Radicati Group statistics in 2006 estimated the number of e-mails sent per day to be around 183 billion by about 1.1 billion users worldwide and 1.4 billion active accounts, making it one in six people on earth using e-mail. This as compared to 1991 where e-mail users were estimated at 12 million has been a huge rise.[1] Due to quick and efficient communication, e-mail has become popular replacing both phone and postal mail (Schnaitman, 1997).[2]

E-mail is an effective communication means for both business and personal use. Quick (mass) communication within seconds, convenience with managing and sending of mail at any particular time and negligible cost are the rationale for its success. However like any other technology it has its drawback too. The biggest disadvantage being that e-mail, as most believe is not private.

The increased reliance on technology has created new privacy issues. The fear of employers that employees could easily transmit confidential information and documents to others or use company e-mail for personal, rather than business correspondence has led to exercising control over employee e-mails. This in recent years has caused a lot of controversory of how much control can employers exert of employees privacy.

Klegal’s survey in 2002 claimed that the biggest workplace issue faced by UK employers was disciplining staff over the internet and e-mail.[3] The American Management Association, in an annual survey claim that 84% respondents have a written policy for e-mail use, and 81% for Internet use; 24% have e-policy training programs, an additional 10% plan one and 15% have been involved in some kind of legal action concerning employee use of e-mail and/or Internet connections.[4]