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Employee Surveillance

What is it?

"continuous, systematic surveillance" in the workplace to make sure that employees are doing their jobs as directed to.
Examples of Computer-monitoring programs are: Shadow, SpyAgent, Web Sleuth and Silent Watch. The prices of these programs range from as little as $30 to thousands of dollars

Why do they do it?

The growing number of employers who are monitoring their employees' activities is a result of the low cost of the monitoring technology; it's just cheap to get the tech required to do it
Cyberslacking is increasing; More than 70 percent of the adult online population has accessed the Internet at work for personal use at least once, according to a September 2000 eMarketer study. Employees are sending personal e-mails, playing games, viewing pornography, shopping, checking stock prices and gambling online during working hours.
a growing percentage of employees using their computers for personal use and an increase in employees leaking sensitive company information. Employers are also watching their workers to avoid sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits that stem from inappropriate and offensive e-mails circulating within a company.

Types of Surveillance

There are basically five methods that employers can use to track employee activities:

Packet sniffers [ Go to http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance2.htm for more details ]

Essentially, a packet sniffer is a program that can see all of the information passing over the network it is connected to. As data streams back and forth on the network, the program looks at, or "sniffs," each packet. A packet is a part of a message that has been broken up.
Normally a computer only views some packets and leaves the rest alone, but with the use of a packet sniffer, all of the packets are able to be viewed. This means that it is looking at everything that comes through.
A packet sniffer can usually be set up in one of two ways:

Unfiltered - captures all of the packets
Filtered - captures only those packets containing specific data elements

A packet sniffer located at one of the servers of your ISP would potentially be able to monitor all of your online activities, such as:

Which Web sites you visit
What you look at on the site
Whom you send e-mail to
What's in the e-mail you send
What you download from a site
What streaming events you use, such as audio, video and Internet telephony
Employers would then be able to calculate the amount of time a worker spends on the internet and see if they have been to restricted sites.

Log files [ Go to http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance4.htm for more details ]

Your computer is full of log files that provide evidence of what you've been doing. Through these log files, a system administrator can determine what Web sites you've accessed, whom you are sending e-mails to and receiving e-mails from and what applications are being used.
Log files are basically "footprints" of where you have been with your computer, what you have been doing and looking at.
In many cases, this information can be located even after you've deleted what you thought was all the evidence -- but deleting an e-mail, or a file, doesn't erase the trail. Here are a few places where log files can be found:

Operating systems
Web browsers (in the form of a cache)
Applications (in the form of backups)
E-mail

Desktop monitoring programs [ Go to http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance3.htm for more details ]

Every time you provide some form of input for your computer, whether it's typing on the keyboard or opening a new application, a signal is transmitted. These signals can be intercepted by a desktop monitoring program, which can be installed on a computer at the operating system level or the assembly level
The desktop monitoring program can view what the computer is viewing on their computer screen and also what characters the user has typed or is typing
Desktop monitoring programs can be installed in two ways:
Physically - Someone sits at the computer and installs the software.
Remotely - A computer user opens an e-mail attachment. The attachment, which contains a program the user wants to install, may also contain desktop monitoring software. This is described as a Trojan horse -- a desired program that contains an undesired program.
To give you an idea of how sneaky desktop monitoring programs are, Hackers often use desktop monitoring programs to obtain user passwords. Intercept programs, because they record keystrokes, also make users susceptible to having their credit card numbers and other sensitive personal data stolen.
But employers don't need to install software to track your computer use. There are actually systems built into every computer that make finding out what you've been doing pretty easy.

Phones and Closed-circuit cameras [ Go to http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance5.htm for more details ]

Currently, 78 percent of all companies use some type of surveillance system. Here is a breakdown of the methods they use:

Storing and reviewing computer files: 36 percent
Video-recording employees: 15 percent
Recording and reviewing phone calls: 12 percent
Storing and reviewing voice mail: 8 percent

Is this really legal?!?! The ACLU estimates that employers eavesdrop on about 400 million telephone calls annually. Federal wiretap laws forbid eavesdropping on conversations unless one of the parties to the conversation consents, but the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986 allows employers to listen to "job-related" conversations.
In addition to monitoring phone conversations, employers often place video cameras in the work area to monitor employee activity.
The picture at the top of this page illustrates some different ways an employer can watch the employee

Pros/Cons

Pros

it can be good to monitor employees to make sure they are working
it keeps employees working and ensures positive progress to be made
can protect employees from other employees that are harassing them
keeps people behaved in the workplace
limits wasting of company time

Cons

it can potentially invade an employee's privacy
it creates a sense of "big brother" is watching at work
sensitive information such as passwords may be picked up through the use of the surveillance technology, whose fault would that be if someone's information was stolen?

Ethical Issues

"Privacy in today's workplace is largely illusory," Bayer said. "In this era of open-space cubicles, shared desk space, networked computers and teleworkers, it is hard to realistically hold onto 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."
Privacy Laws: Simply said, courts in the United States tend to favor the employer in workplace-surveillance cases so be careful about what you are doing at work! There are laws that talk about what is legal and illegal to monitor. [ Go to http://computer.howstuffworks.com/workplace-surveillance6.htm for details ] But basically, electronic communication in transit is safe and illegal to record but accessing stored electronic communication, such as e-mail sitting on a server waiting to be sent, is not illegal. So make sure you stay on the job at work!
Directly from the folks in Washington "The U.S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy, but the U.S. Supreme Court has historically upheld an implied right to privacy. However, this right does not apply to employees. Courts seem to be upholding the idea that since the company owns the equipment and the office space, it has a right to monitor its employees to prevent misuse of that equipment and space"

AnthonyHoHoHo	Latest page update: made by AnthonyHoHoHo , May 5 2009, 8:30 PM EDT (about this update About This Update TADAH! done! :] - AnthonyHoHoHo 1 word added 1 word deleted view changes - complete history)
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