Electronic surveillance in the workplace.doc

Electronic surveillance in the workplace Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace:Concerns for Employees and Challenges for Privacy Advocates Anna Johnston and Myra Cheng Paper delivered 28 November 2002 International Conference on Personal Data Protection Hosted by Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee, Korea Information Security Agency Seoul, Korea Ms Anna Johnston is the NSW Deputy Privacy Commissioner. Ms Myra Cheng is a Research Policy Officer with Privacy NSW, the Office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr Ben Searle, Macquarie University, in providing an overview of the relevant literature from the field of organisational psychology. Introduction This paper takes up the challenge of talking about privacy in the workplace - a site of potential conflict in which there may be co-existing radically different views on whether workers can or should have any expectations of privacy. As long as there has been employment, employees have been monitored. Nebeker D M B C Tatum, The effects of computer monitoring, standards and rewards on work performance, job satisfaction and stress (1993) 23(7) Journal of Applied Social Psychology 508 at 508. However, in recent years, with an environment of affordable technology, the availability of less easily observable or detectable monitoring devices, and a lack of adequate regulation, there has been an explosion in the use of electronic monitoring and surveillance in the workplace. A recent study by the American Management Association (AMA) found that almost 80% of the largest companies in the US had engaged in some form of electronic surveillance over the previous year. American Management Association, Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance Survey, (New York: 2001). This figure is more than double the rate recorded only five years ago: 35.3% in 1997. Ibid. Yet for some years now, concerns have been raised about the negative impact of electronic surv