Cyberveillance

Anxious to bid on the camera you’ve been eyeing on eBay? You might want to think twice before doing it at work. Chances are every digital move you make is being recorded—yes, even your instant messages. “Is that fair or even legal?” you ask. For now, surveillance is lawful in the workplace, but whether it’s an ethical intrusion of employee privacy is still much debated.

BACKGROUND:

Technological advancements have long threatened the right to privacy. When photography and the printing press became a privacy concern, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and attorney Samuel Warren noted 116 years ago: “It has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such [privacy] protection.”¹ The already uneasy relationship between privacy and technology has become even more intense in the last decade. With the advent of the Internet, communication has never been more convenient—and tracking it has never been easier. Companies are quickly snatching up the newest cyberveillance software. Experts are not only wondering if they’ll see a backlash from employees who want privacy and trust but also if business has once again reached a time when it’s necessary to redefine the nature and extent of privacy protection.²

CURRENT SITUATION:

Employers are concerned about the increasing number of office hours being squandered online. And with statistics like these, why shouldn’t they be? Forty-four percent of American workers consider web surfing their top workplace distraction, according to a recent study by Salary.com and America Online. The study revealed that employees spend an average of two work hours a day surfing the web, costing U.S. companies an estimated $759 billion a year in wasted salaries.³

With numbers like that, it isn’t surprising that 76 percent of employers are now monitoring employees’ web site connections, according to a report by the American Management Association (AMA) and the ePolicy Institute.⁴ Computer monitoring takes various forms including tracking content, keystrokes, keywords, and time spent at the keyboard. Most companies are tracking all of the these, and more than half are actually reviewing the data and storing it.

In addition to spyware software, many employers have developed or revamped their e-technology policies as a result of a growing concern about litigation and the role of electronic evidence in lawsuits. The AMA report shows a majority of companies have email and Internet usage policies, nearly half have instant messenger policies, and one-third have blogging policies. But despite the increase in policies and the fact that most companies tell employees they are being monitored, at least twenty-five percent of employers have fired someone for misusing the Internet or email.

GLOBAL BANKING LTD. CASE:

This is a hypothetical case study developed by Marriott School Professor Jeffrey A. Thompson and colleagues.⁵

Global Banking Ltd. is a one-hundred-year-old American company with offices worldwide. Specializing in retail banking and financial services, Global is a well-managed, relatively fast-paced bank with a culture that inspires employee loyalty and trust. In the most recent fiscal year, the company reported assets in excess of $50 billion. Global credits their success to their utilization of the best people and technology in the world.

Bank executives are considering installing software on their global intranet that will monitor every employee’s computer activity, both online and offline. In essence, they would be monitoring every message sent, every web site visited, every file formatted, and every key stroked, even if the employee never stored the data. The bank wants to know if installing the software will prove to be a productivity booster or a morale buster.

OPTION 1:

GAUGE EMPLOYEE RESPONSE, THEN PROCEED ACCORDINGLY

Before making a decision about installing surveillance software, Global could conduct a survey to gauge how their employees would respond to being monitored. Because Global has offices in regions around the world, this approach could be especially useful to get an idea how individual cultures would react to cyberveillance. However, Global should only choose this option if they are willing to proceed in either direction according to the responses they receive. The following memo is an example of how CEO B. J. Murphy could approach this issue:

To: Geographic division managers

From: B. J. Murphy

Re: Monitoring software

Recently, I saw a survey by the American Management Association that reported increasing corporate use of sanctions against violators of their rules on computer use. Twenty-six percent of the companies surveyed said they have dismissed employees for misuse or personal use of telecommunications equipment. Almost three-quarters of U.S. companies now have monitoring software.

While I am not an alarmist, nor do I believe that we have a serious problem at this time, I have spoken with representatives of several firms that make monitoring software a practice. They assure me that it is quite easy to maintain. However, before I proceed, I wanted to get your reactions to installing this software. For example,

How do you think employees in your culture will feel about being monitored?

Should we tell employees we are doing this and, if so, what policy statement ideas do you have for presenting this to all employees?

What about our company culture? Does this kind of surveillance damage our strong reputation for loyalty and trust?

Would you recommend proceeding? And if so, how should we implement?

I would appreciate hearing your reactions to these issues at our next meeting. Please come prepared to discuss these issues and, in particular, “local” issues as they relate to your culture. I am quite confident, given each of your special talents, that you can develop recommendations that will benefit our shareholders and our employees. I look forward to your recommendations.⁶

OPTION 2:

PROCEED WITH MONITORING

Global may decide opening up the discussion is too risky. They know if they receive negative feedback to monitoring and still move forward, the outcome could be worse than if they had never asked for input at all. In this scenario, Global would make the executive decision that it is in the best interest of the company to implement surveillance software. Global hopes that monitoring would prevent employees from sharing company secrets, harassing other workers, committing fraud, and wasting time.

If Global’s U.S. employees are following suit with the rest of America, they’re spending at least a quarter of their work day on non-work-related activities such as web surfing, emailing, blogging, or instant messaging. Even worse, some employees could be visiting pornographic sites or sending inappropriate emails—risking sexual harassment lawsuits. It wasn’t long ago that Xerox fired forty employees for visiting pornographic web sites; The New York Times fired twenty-three employees for spending most of their work day at gambling and porn sites.⁷ Although less offensive, e-commerce sites also lure plenty of nine-to-five traffic their way. With faster connections at work than at home, employees often end up multitasking, or “multislacking,” at work—planning vacations, ordering clothes and gifts, playing video games, checking out sports, and day trading. Charles Schwab & Co. report that as many as 70 percent of their clientele manage their online trading from their office desks.⁸

In addition to increasing productivity, cyberveillance would also serve as a legal protection for Global. “Cooking the books” wouldn’t be as easy with e-records. With the recent wave of fraud, government regulation has actually mandated some companies to e-monitor. The SEC requires more than eight thousand securities dealers to keep electronic records of instant messages for at least three years. Hospitals and insurance companies are also required to preserve all e-communications related to a patient’s health.⁹ With monitoring measures in place, Global may not only be able to weed out unethical employees but also prove their own or an employee’s innocence.

Pointing out the benefits of monitoring to Global employees would increase the odds of getting a positive response. Experts agree that companies should always disclose their surveillance. Often employees who are tired of their co-workers slacking while they work hard are relieved to see such measures put in place, even if it means giving up some privacy.

OPTION 3:

CHOOSE NOT TO MONITOR

Although there are numerous benefits to installing surveillance software, Global may decide they don’t outweigh the costs. The cornerstones of their company are loyalty and trust—what does it say about their level of trust if they monitor their employees’ every move? Global credits their success to hiring the best people in the world—a message that may lose credibility if they implement e-monitoring.

Experts say that e-monitoring often dehumanizes the workplace; reduces employee control and job satisfaction; and increases stress, fatigue, tension, irritability, and headaches. Some scholars even doubt that computer monitoring is cost effective.¹⁰ Opponents of cyberveillance agree that employees do spend some work time on personal computer activities, but they also point out that the lines between home and work are blurred. Employees are working longer hours and allowing work to come home with them, so it’s only fair that a little bit of personal life seep into work. And although it seems clear that employees should not be paid for their non-essential computer activities, it doesn’t necessarily give employers the right to intercept, collect, and review information from innocent use—especially if it occurs during non-paid portions of the workday.¹¹

While respecting their employees’ rights to privacy in the workplace, Global may also be protecting them from the abuses of monitoring. In the wrong manager’s hands, cyberveillance could be dangerous. Employees want to know who is monitoring the monitor. Spyware is so advanced that not only can every keystroke be recorded, but with the click of a button a manager can see any employee’s screen in live time. If an employee makes a quick online purchase, his or her credit card number just became company information. Those doing the monitoring could use content to embarrass employees, get even with them, steal their ideas, or covertly evaluate their performance.¹²

Some academics say this new technology is the realization of a prediction by Brandeis and Warren: “Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person . . . the right ‘to be let alone.’ Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the housetops.’”¹³

Employee advocates hope that laws to help protect employees will eventually catch up to spyware technology. By choosing this option, Global decides to go against the trend, because e-monitoring is not a cultural fit. For now, they’ll revise their Internet policies and put off using the software until they see a serious problem or concern.

EPILOGUE

No matter which option Global chooses, they’ll find it’s nearly impossible to strike a perfect balance between legitimate business interests in workplace efficiency and equally legitimate interests in workplace privacy. But there are some measures they can take that will benefit both the bank and its employees.

Regardless of whether they use e-monitoring software, they can develop and communicate clear guidelines and policies explaining in detail what is and isn’t acceptable. The bank should be reasonable and respectful of its employees’ needs and time, recognizing that an overworked employee has earned a few minutes of downtime during work hours.

If employers do feel e-monitoring is necessary, they could look for software that is less invasive to employee privacy, such as those that block inappropriate web sites and look for suspicious keywords only in emails and instant messages. When implementing new policies or software, the company should always notify employees in advance.

Finally, although it’s easier said than done, the bank should strive to hire employees they can trust. If Global employees live up to their reputation of being the best in the business, cyberveillance won’t be a productivity booster or morale buster—it will simply be unnecessary.

Top Time-Wasting Activities

1. Surfing internet (personal use) 44.7%
2. Socializing with co-workers 23.4%
3. Conducting personal business 6.8%
4. Spacing out 3.9%
5. Running errands off-premises 3.1%
6. Making personal phone calls 2.3%
7. Applying for other jobs 1.3%
8. Planning personal events 1.0%
9. Arriving late/leaving early 1.0%
10. Other 12.5%

Source: www.salary.com

Top Time-Wasting excuses

1. Don't have enough work to do 33.2%
2. Underpaid for amount of work 23.4%
3. Co-workers distract me 14.7%
4. Not enough after-work time 12.0%
5. Other 16.7%
   

(Source: www.salary.com)

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Article written by J. Melody Murdock
Illustration by Jon Krause

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

J. Melody Murdock is former editor of Marriott Alumni Magazine and is now a freelance writer and editor based in Salt Lake City. She earned her BA in 2000 and master’s degree in mass communication in 2003 from BYU.
ENDNOTES

1. David Zweig and Jane Webster. “Where Is the Line Between Benign and Invasive?” Journal of Organizational Behavior 5 (August 2002): 605.
2. Ibid.
3. Dan Malachowski. “Wasted Time at Work Costing Companies Billions.” Retrieved 15 October 2005 online at www.salary.com.
4. American Management Association and ePolicy Institute Research. “2005 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey.” Retrieved 15 October 2005 online at www.amanet.org/press/amanews/ems05.htm.
5. This is a hypothetical case borrowed from research by John F. Veiga, Jeffery A. Thompson, Richard Dino, Irene Hau Siu Chow, Eleanor O’Higgins, and Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa. “The Ethics of Cyberveillance in a Global Context.” The Review of Business Information Systems. 3 (2004).
6. Ibid.
7. Michele Masterson. “Cyberveillance at Work.” (4 January 2000). Retrieved online 15 October 2005 at money.cnn.com/2000/01/04/technology/webspy/.
8. Michelle Conlin. “Workers, Surf at Your Own Risk.” BusinessWeek Online. (12 June 2000). Retrieved 15 October 2005 online at businessweek.com/2000/00_24/b3685257.htm.
9. Jason McLure. “U R Hereby Fired!” Newsweek. 20 (17 November 2003): e31.
10. Kristen Bell DeTienne. “Big Brother Is Watching: Computer Monitoring and Communication.” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. 1 (March 1004): 5.
11. Charles Frayer. “Employee Privacy and Internet Monitoring.” The Business Lawyer. 2 (February 2002): 857.
12. David Zweig and Jane Webster. “Where Is the Line Between Benign and Invasive?”
13. Warren and L. D. Brandeis. “The Right to Privacy.” Harvard Law Review 4 (1890): 193-220.