Workplace Privacy
Privacy is widely recognized and protected by national law and international doctrines all over the world. According to Bagdanskis and Sartatavičius (2012), individual’s private and domestic life is protected by law and thus without his consent, no one is allowed to monitor, involve in, or control his life.
With regards to privacy, the authors summarized that there were 4 main types of privacy – information, physical, communicational, and territorial privacy. In the workplace context, the privacy protection is also applied and the communicational privacy tends to attract so much of attention and discussions when electronic communication has become an integral part of every business in this digital age.
In the article, the author posited that the degree of employee’s electronic workplace protection established in the U.S. Constitution was very limited. In fact, the U.S. federal and state laws barely paid attention to protect employee’s privacy and thus the U.S. workplace was claimed employee unfriendly with respect to digital communication privacy protection.
The Electronic communication privacy act was one of the main acts concerning protection of employee’s privacy in the workplace. Although it aimed to protect the employee’s privacy over electronic communication, the act surprisingly consisted three exceptions in which an employer was given the right to monitor employee’s electronic activities, put it another way, the employer could revoke employee’s privacy protection lawfully.
First, providers exception allowed employer to control the information exchange via his equipment; that means he could monitor employee’s email, instant conversations, social media activities, etc. Second, ordinary course of business exception stated that employer was allowed to monitor his employee electronically if he suspected that the employee’s activity could interfere company’s rights and interest without any real reasonable evidence required. Third, consent exception mean that with the given consent from employee, employer could implement any type of surveillance legally.
It is needless to say that the government organizations and agencies where the organization’s interest is the top priority are applying the act relentlessly. In my last job with the U.S. Consulate, on the first day at work, every newly-hired employee is always overwhelmed and surprised with the briefing on privacy.
Besides a myriad of regulations and policies regarding what employees are allowed to do and not to do, the key point of the briefing is to emphasize that when working for the government, access to the work computer and network is a privilege and the local-employed staff should not expect any degree of digital privacy protection when working on the work-related systems.
After the briefing, the employee has to sign the agreement to give consent to the Information Resources Management section to access his email, to monitor computer activities, to surveil phone calls and text messages, and to audit bank account when needed.
Notably, when there is a slightest suspicion that employee’s communications could conflict with or harm the U.S. government interest or security, the employer can retrieve information from these digital sources and use it as evidence to against the employee without any prior notice.
The article argued that the act had raised copious concerns regarding privacy issues and there had been many cases that the use of workplace monitoring and control outweighed and aggressively invaded employee’s right to privacy which is protected by the constitution. However, the author left the question unanswered which is how the legislative and juridical systems address this problematic privacy issue.
Reference:
Bagdanskis, T. & Sartatavičius, P. (2012). Workplace privacy: Different views and arising issues. Jurisprudencija, 19 (2), 697-713. Retrieved from https://www.mruni.eu/upload/iblock/71e/016_bagdanskis_sartatavicius.pdf
