Topic Exploration Group #5: The Legal Benefits And Ramifications Of Employee Surveillance Systems.

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      As I have mentioned in previous posts, there are a number of reasons that companies might want to monitor employee communications, two of the most important of which is to prevent leaks of sensitive information and to avoid lawsuits that come from employee misconduct. Employers have a right to protect their copyrights and patents, especially when they are working to secure those resources and get them to market. They also have a right to avoid the legal ramifications of actions committed by employees while on the job. Many companies hope that communication monitoring methods well help decrease these from happening, both by letting the employer nip potential misconduct in the bud and by psychologically manipulating employees to feel like they are always watched, so they know it is difficult to get away with such actions. Unfortunately, implementing such software systems is not without its own legal ramifications.

      The article linked above is a take on the legal issues that arise when a corporation implements communication monitoring systems to observe its employees. One of the biggest of these is that such systems would technically count as hacking, since, as the paper explains, the Electronic Communications Act has clear rules against the interception of electronic messages. The law does make some exceptions, of course, but those exceptions are not many and do not give the employer the right to do whatever they want. There are even laws in place and court precedent that establish that employees have the right to a certain amount of privacy while in the workplace. Implementing electronic surveillance systems opens employers to all sorts of potential new legal issues and lawsuits that they might not have had to face before.

      So, what do I think about all this? I think if a corporation is large enough, legal issues tend to arise, no matter what the company does. What really determines what a company should do is the costs of those legal issues and the frequency with which they occur. It seems to me the issues that arise without surveillance systems seem much more damaging that the ones that arise from the use of such systems. But, the implementation of such systems does not mean the previous problems have gone away entirely, they are just lessened in number, while adding on new, different problems. As such, implementing electronic surveillance systems seems to add as many problems as it takes away, making me question further the usefulness of the systems.

So, what do others think of this matter? Do the legal problems that arise from implementing surveillance systems decrease the benefits of such systems enough to make the systems poor choices? Or are the benefits worth the risks?

-Noel Hansen.