Privacy in the Workplace

For a number of years, organizations of all sizes have intruded on the privacy of would-be employees as a condition of employment. Checking veracity of rTsumTs, "background investigations" that include obtaining employee credit and criminal history, drug testing, lie detector tests, aptitude tests, psychological evaluations, medical exams--all may be conditions of both getting hired and holding a job (Shumaker, 2003).

The explosion of computer technology in the last decade of the 20th century multiplied the capacity of employers to intrude on employee privacy. There are obvious benefits in having a wealth of research and life-management resources available to anyone who can access the Internet. Those who have Internet access at their workplace can also by and large save the cost of a personal investment in a home-computer system if necessary. On the other hand, at a time when much personal information is stored online in data banks used by financial, commercial, and government institutions, the very availability of information puts individual privacy at risk. And at the workplace, where the indivi

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f business" (Knowles, 2000). To be sure, the ECPA also "prohibits the interception of e-mail transmissions" (Patzakis, 2006). However, that prohibition is qualified by the fact that employers may do so if employees have given prior consent (i.e., if employers have established policies that notify employees that their communications are subject to monitoring). Prior notification/consent appears to be the test of whether the monitoring is legal, although Patzakis explains that the law has not been fully settled on that point. Historically in the United States, there has been a presumption that all people (that would include employees) have Constitutional protections, including a general expectation of privacy in certain matters. The Fourth Amendment specifically and programmatically mandates that the people be secure "in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." That forms the basis of the opposition by the American Civil Liberties Union and various privacy advocates to employee monitoring (Knowles, 2000). It is possible to consider conditions under which employer monitoring of employees would be appropriate. In today's legal climate, employers can be held liable for failure to protec
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Approximate Word count = 1572
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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