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ABSTRACT. This paper examines workplace surveillance and monitoring. It is argued that privacy is a moral right, and while such surveillance and monitoring can be justified in some circumstances, there is a presumption against the infringement of privacy. An account of privacy precedes consideration of various arguments frequently given for the surveillance and monitoring of employees, arguments which look at the benefits, or supposed benefits, to employees as well as to employers. The paper examines the general monitoring of work, and the monitoring of email, listservers and the World Wide Web. It is argued that many of the common justifications given for this surveillance and monitoring do not stand up to close scrutiny.
KEY WORDS: email, internet, monitoring, privacy, surveillance, workplace, World Wide Web
The coming into being of new communication and computer technologies has generated a host of ethical problems, and some of the more pressing concern the moral notion of privacy. Some of these problems arise from new possibilities of data collections, and software for computer monitoring. For example, computers can now combine and integrate data bases provided by polling and other means to enable highly personalised and detailed voter profiles. Another cluster of problems revolves around the threat to privacy posed by the new possibilities of monitoring and surveillance. For example, telephone tapping, interception of electronic mail messages, minute cameras and virtually undetectable listening and recording devices give unprecedented access to private conversations and other private communications and interactions. Possibly the greatest threat to privacy is posed by the possibility of combining these new technologies and specifically combining the use of monitoring and surveillance devices with certain computer software and computer networks, including the Internet.
Concerns about the use of computer technology to monitor the performance and activity of employees in the workplace are not new (see Garson, 1988; and Zuboff, 1988), and are widely discussed from a variety of perspectives, frequently in computer ethics texts. Johnson (1995), and Forester and Morrison (1991) raise questions regarding the monitoring of work, while Langford (1995) and Severson (1997) both discuss the monitoring of employees email. The works just cited mention arguments both from the point of view of employers and employees. Parker et al. take a different approach (1990). Their discussion is...