POLICE STATE / MILITARY - LOOKING GLASS NEWS | |
Big Brother is here: The invisible eye monitors what you do at work |
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from The Standard
Entered into the database on Monday, October 10th, 2005 @ 14:13:24 MST |
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George Orwell, who imagined the ultimate dystopia more than 50 years
ago, wouldn’t be surprised at developments in today’s technology-saturated
workplaces. Web commentators have noted that increased monitoring of office communications
may be turning the new age of high tech into a "dark age of innovation".
Indeed, many office workers are wondering nowadays whether 2005 is really 1984. Is this electronic hyperbole or fact? A review of online surveys would seem to indicate that the people who own the
machines increasingly want to know what those using them are uploading, downloading,
or emailing — and for good reason, as it affects their bottom line. In
fact, studies show that many workers are surfing, blogging, gaming, shopping,
booking travel, viewing "entertainment" sites, checking investments,
or even gambling — activities that aren’t necessarily part of their
job descriptions or contributing to profits. Clearly, employers have good reason
to want to know whether their employees are working or playing on the job —
but where is the line between privacy and responsibility to the company? According to one survey, more than 70 per cent of adult Internet users in the
United States have accessed the Internet at work for personal use at least once,
while 76 per cent of companies monitor workers’ web site connections.
If the Internet is the great leveller of global communications, and is "globalising"
information management, it is equally egalitarian when it comes to how it affects
employees — whatever their status in the hierarchy. Emails to "friends"
have cost some CEOs their jobs, while misuse of emails for "bad behaviour"
or personal reasons has caused a great many more employees to lose theirs. The 2005 Electronic Monitoring and Surveillance Survey released in conjunction
with The ePolicy Institute and the American Management Association (AMA) found
that in order to "motivate" compliance, 26 per cent of the 526 US
companies surveyed had fired workers for misusing the Internet and another 25
per cent had terminated employees for email misuse. So, from top to bottom,
employees and employers who think they can use email or IT with impunity are
beginning to think again. Increasingly, people are finding that somewhere, somehow,
unbeknownst to them, someone is or may be monitoring their online activities,
emails, or keystrokes; listening to or recording their calls; or even monitoring
their movements and identities. So, is workplace privacy at risk? Should there even be workplace privacy? Where
does one draw the line between what is acceptable and unacceptable when using
high-tech equipment provided by the office? Who "owns" the devices
you use and the information you process? These and other questions are receiving
new attention as public versus private communicating becomes a predominant issue
in the world of work. The stakes are huge: one survey, carried out by a US company that produces
software for monitoring employees’ computer and phone activities, quotes
independent research saying IT managers will face the management of 35 million
remote users of the Internet this year, with 14 billion devices on the Internet
by 2010. The company also estimates the cost of all this online time at $138
billion in the US alone, based on Internet use of some 53 million employees. The result is that managers are increasing the monitoring in some workplaces
of employee communicating, mostly in the industrialised world. The 2005 AMA
survey bears this out. Of those 526 US companies surveyed, 76 per cent keep
tabs on their employees’ use of email, telephone, and the Internet. Roughly
65 per cent use specialised software to block connections to web sites deemed
"inappropriate" by company or organisation IT departments. Furthermore,
36 per cent of employers track content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard,
50 per cent store and review employee computer files, and 55 per cent retain
and review employees messages. Still, most employers are "doing a good job of notifying employees when
they are being watched", the AMA says, with 80 per cent actually informing
employees their every "e-move" is under scrutiny, 82 per cent letting
employees know the company stores and reviews computer files, 86 per cent alerting
employees to email monitoring, and 89 per cent notifying employees that their
web usage is being tracked. "Workers, email, IM, blogs, and Internet content
create written business records that are the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence,"
said Nancy Flynn, Executive Director of The ePolicy Institute. A number of companies surveyed admitted to using emerging technologies to monitor
employee performance and activity. Some use such new technologies to monitor
employee identity. Five per cent use global positioning satellite (GPS) software to monitor cell
phones, 8 per cent to track company vehicles, and 8 per cent to monitor employees
IDs. More slow to be adopted are biometric devices such as finger scans (5 per
cent), facial recognition (2 per cent), and iris scans (0.5 per cent). The 2004 Workplace Email and IM Survey by the AMA and The ePolicy Institute
revealed that one in five employers has had email subpoenaed by courts and regulators
and another 13 per cent have battled workplace lawsuits triggered by employees
email. "Privacy in today’s workplace is largely illusory," says one
expert. "In this era of open-space cubicles, shared desk space, networked
computers, and teleworkers, it is hard to realistically hold on to a belief
of private space. Work is carried out on equipment belonging to employers who
have a legal right to the work product of the employees using it". Indeed, making sure that equipment provided to the employee is used for work
instead of personal communication or outright play is of increasing concern
to employers. A world-wide survey of chief information security officers conducted
by CIO Magazine and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2004, The Global State of Information
Security, indicated that appropriate use of the Internet (46 per cent), appropriate
use of email (56 per cent), user administration (69 per cent), network security
administration (55 per cent), and system security administration (52 per cent)
were most frequently included in their security policies. The study was based
on responses from more than 8,000 IT security professionals from 62 countries. While some employers may understandably be concerned over the time and profits
lost to the Internet or through private use of company communications capabilities,
employees argue that contrary to good intentions, workplace monitoring has the
potential to adversely affect the bottom line by stunting employee productivity
and creating lower morale and increased job stress. A random workplace survey
conducted in 2004 by Scotland’s Public Service Union of 230 members mostly
from the private sector showed the overall impact of monitoring on employees
themselves negatively affected their productivity. More than half of respondents
regarded the practice as "demeaning and stress inducing" and claimed
to suffer from anxiety, and 17 per cent suffered from depression. Other responses
to employee monitoring included loss of sleep and extended absence due to sickness. But how far is too far? Recent high-profile cases involving top executives
indicate that authorities are beginning to watch the watchers. For example,
the former chief executive of a large telecom company in Finland and four other
former employees were recently found guilty of violating privacy laws by ordering
employees’ phone calls and emails to be tracked. Sometimes, those at the top may also pay a price for monitoring people lower
down the corporate ladder. The classic example is the case of a high-profile
CEO in the US who recently lost his job for sending explicit emails to a female
colleague with whom he was presumed to have a special relationship — not
because of the affair but because the inappropriate language contained in the
emails violated the company’s conduct code. |