12
LITTLE BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU The legal and ethical issue of employer’s looking over the shoulder of their employees. Jeff Linton

Little brother is watching you

  • Upload
    feleti

  • View
    47

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

Little brother is watching you. The legal and ethical issue of employer’s looking over the shoulder of their employees. Jeff Linton. The issue. Little Brother D atabase of 45,000 web sites Employers monitor their employee’s internet usage. P roductive , nonproductive or neutral - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Citation preview

Page 1: Little brother is watching you

LITTLE BROTHER IS WATCHING YOUThe legal and ethical issue of employer’s looking over the shoulder of their employees.

Jeff Linton

Page 2: Little brother is watching you

THE ISSUE Little Brother

Database of 45,000 web sites Employers monitor their employee’s internet

usage. Productive, nonproductive or neutral Provides employee ratings Block objectionable web sites Remotely enter employee hard drives Read employee email Find deleted emails

Page 3: Little brother is watching you

THE LAW 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act,

“illegal for unauthorized individuals to look at someone else’s email,” but the Act exempts service providers from these provisions.

Santa Clara University Professor of Law Dorothy Glancy "Often, court opinions take the point of view that when

the employees are using employers' property—the employers' computers and networks—the employees' expectation of privacy is minimal.”

Page 4: Little brother is watching you

THE LAW

Example: man fired for inappropriate emails to his supervisor

about management. claimed his rights were violated because the company

promised him his emails were private.

courts ruled in the company’s favor “The company's interest in preventing inappropriate

and unprofessional conduct outweighed the man’s privacy rights.”

Page 5: Little brother is watching you

CASE FOR WORKPLACE MONITORING employers can use the software to find and delete games

that employees have downloaded or installed so….. No issue with employers expecting computers they

provide for work to be used for work so… Big deal employers look through employee internet

browsing history to see if they are spending their time on work- related activities?

Nielsen Media Research: employees at major corporations such as IBM, Apple,

and AT&T logged onto the online edition of Penthouse thousands of times a month.”

Page 6: Little brother is watching you

CASE FOR WORKPLACE MONITORING Employees using email to steal key information from

them: The article cited a man who was caught emailing his personal email

account $5 million bytes of company source code on company products. It was found out he was doing this to bring it to a rival company of which he was leaving to go work for!

Being sued for inappropriate work atmospheres due to inappropriate emails. Sexual / Racial Jokes Pornography in emails

Page 7: Little brother is watching you

CASE AGAINST WORKPLACE MONITORING Employee writes a note to her boyfriend, puts it

in an envelope, affixes her own stamp, and drops it in the outgoing mail

Fact that the pencil and paper she used belong to her employer give her boss the right to open and read the letter?

Is this so different than the employer looking into email just because they own the computer?

Page 8: Little brother is watching you

CASE AGAINST WORKPLACE MONITORING As long as their internet usage does not

interfere with the job The time management spends monitoring

employee usage is just as much a waste of time While employee computers are being

monitored, who is monitoring management’s computers?

Page 9: Little brother is watching you

CAN THERE BE COMMON GROUND? Employers:

honest up front about how much “computer privacy” employees will actually have.

Employees: If told up front and not OK with it, go somewhere else

Survey of employees: Most employees heard about their e-mail policy by word of

mouth or were involved in the writing of the policy.

Page 10: Little brother is watching you

MY OPINION No problem

Keep the big picture in mind. If employee is looking at pornography,

then yes, I deserve to have consequences.

If it is shown that employee has spent time on ESPN.com, and work is getting done, then who cares!

Page 11: Little brother is watching you

MY OPINION Companies need to take a look at worker

productivity in terms of the work that is assigned to employees.

If they see someone is getting their job done but has spent hours on non- work related sites, then give them more work to do, not fire them!

Management should not be allowed to look at employees’ email unless it is needed in some sort of legal issue.

Page 12: Little brother is watching you

ARTICLE Miriam Schulman, Santa Clara University http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v9n2/

brother.html