RESEARCH Business Industry

PRIVACY
Implications of monitoring employee behavior need to be reviewed

Mark Reutter, Business Editor
(217) 333-0568; mreutter@uiuc.edu

2/1/02

Photo by Bill Wiegand Matthew W. Finkin, a UI law professor, has written extensively on workplace privacy issues.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Private electronic monitoring of employee behavior grows apace even as questions over the government’s right to track intimate data on citizens have grown more heated among some lawmakers and civil libertarians.

The Bush administration's proposal to sniff out terrorists by giving government agencies power to spy on citizen e-mail, mine electronic databases and plant surveillance equipment has raised hackles from both conservatives and liberals.

Ironically, such measures are almost routine in corporate America, according to a University of Illinois privacy expert. "Long before Sept. 11, technology was creating a workplace where phone calls, voice mail and e-mail messages were regularly monitored by employers," said Matthew W. Finkin, a UI law professor, who has written extensively on workplace privacy issues.

Before the terrorist attacks, Congress was considering measures to protect privacy, and opinion polls showed that Americans were concerned about the issue. Today the question of privacy in the workplace has been pushed onto the back burner.

"There are no standards, legal or otherwise, that exist for limiting the collection or utilization of personal information about employees in cyberspace," Finkin pointed out. "The only law on the books, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, permits systematic employer monitoring so long as employees have notice or so long as it is done as a matter of routine for business purposes."

The Internet revolution has spurred a long-term push by employers to monitor employee behavior. "Data for 2001 indicate that 77.7 percent of large companies responding to a survey by the American Management Association record and review employee communications or other activities on the job by monitoring e-mail messages and computer files," Finkin said.

Of the estimated 41 million "online" employees whose e-mail or Internet access is monitored, about 14 million workers are under "continuous" surveillance as opposed to spot checks or "reasonable suspicion" searches of computer records.

The reason for heightened business surveillance involves several factors, Finkin said. Many businesses are concerned that employees "surf the net" while at work, especially (until the stock market bubble burst) for financial data or stock trading. Others worry about potential liability for the transmission and display of pornographic material over company computers or on employee home pages accessible to the public. A final concern is the transmission of trade secrets and other confidential information over the Internet.

While employers do have legitimate concerns, Finkin believes that the implications of cyber-monitoring should be reviewed. "There are lots of needs of commerce that could be satisfied without sacrificing privacy or revealing unnecessary information about employees," he said.