Employee Monitoring: Where do you stand?

[Lori]

This week, DevX Executive Editor, Russell Jones wrote an editorial asking developers to step up and resist companies' efforts to further develop applications that spy on their employees.

Give it a read and tell us what *you* think about the good vs. evil of employee monitoring: http://www.devx.com/opinion/Article/28657

Lori
DevX

[Bronco]

I agree with the article. We should not help employers obtain information that is none of their business. I feel we deserve to have some privacy even while at work. Bronco

[Danny]

While I certainly agree with the general idea of curbing spying at work, I think that remonstrations won't do. What is needed here is a more drastic move: i.e., legislation. Legislation that will draw the lines between what type of information an employer may have access to and -- and what they're not allowed to. Ideally, this should be an international endeavor leading to a treaty such as the Kyoto Protocol of privacy.

[mstraf]

good words Danny, but I think that is overkilling (ideally, like you said). Before an international legislation like that will pass our grand-grand children will be out of college. If will never pass, sometimes issues that are illegal, or confidencial, or private for a country are perfectly fine with others. And small, private-own companies will always find a way out.
We need a way to protect ourself, and this is partly our responsibility. We lock our doors before leaving, we do not wait for the police to do that.
I think that in the hiring process every companies should write down, black on white, which is their privacy policy, and the emploeyer should have the right to know it.

Marco

[Danny]

Certainly, a policy of full disclosure is the first step. The problem is how to enforce it. If employees don't even know that they're being watched by the Big Brother, they won't quit or sue their employer. So I think that legislation, not necessarily a privacy oriented bill but rather, a more constitional right or a derivative of the Human Rights chart, can be exerted. I agree that we shouldn't sit and wait until a few enlightened members of congress/parliament (in other countries) take the initaitive. A more likely option is a precedential ruling of the Supreme Court regarding employees' rights to privacy. I think an employee has the right to monitor outgoing emails, but the least they should do is inform their employees about it, and explicitlt state whether this information is kept, if so for how long, and who has access to it.