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Workplace Monitoring: Today's Panopticon

Modern democratic governments require court orders to invade the privacy of their citizens, while modern companies can violate their employees' privacies on a daily basis without any oversight. In fact, according to a recent report by the Privacy Foundation of Denver, one third of the online workforce in the United States is subject to continuous monitoring of their Internet use (Schulman, 2001, web). While monitoring has always been present in the workplace, recent advancements have permitted companies to invade their employees' privacy like never before. Today electronic monitoring has permeated almost every level of the corporate hierarchy. No one is safe from the ever present surveillance of their employers. Employers justify this violation both to protect their assets and as a method of improving the quantity and quality of their products and services. What employers forget is that monitoring and covert surveillance is negatively affecting their employees. However, what is most worrying is the power imbalance resulting from the perceived continuous observation just as in the Panopticon prison envisioned by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century.

According to the Privacy Foundation, Websense (http://www.websense.com) is the most frequently used Internet monitoring product. Websense boasts that their software is deployed in over 17,000 organizations worldwide, including 282 of the Fortune 500. Websense is based on passed through filtering technology meaning it is installed at a central point such as a company's network proxy, firewall, or caching device. All URLs visited by employees are checked against Websense's database which is updated nightly. URLs not in the database are automatically sent to Websense for review. After a URL is looked up, access is allowed based on rules set by managers. Websense gives a considerable amount of flexibility to managers allowing them to control access to websites at select times thereby permitting employees to spend a portion of their day 'surfing' non-business related content.

In addition to simply monitoring web habits there are a number of products that enable employers to monitor all that happens on an employee's computer. Products by companies such as Spectorsoft allow employers to go so far as to view not only web habits but also to retrieve passwords and pin numbers used for activities such as personal banking. Shockingly they can also monitor keystrokes that were later erased, providing access to an employee's ephemeral thoughts (Schulman, 2001, web).

Not only are there products designed to monitor employees' use of computer resources but employers may also install video surveillance in and around company premises, electronic entry systems enabling them to track an employees movements throughout the day, and they can even deploy GPS tracking technology in company vehicles, allowing employers to track employees both across the city and around the world. Some employers such as Dominion-Swann Industries, have even gone so far as to install urine monitors in their washrooms enabling them to track their employees' health and drug use (Marx, 1996, pg 319).

Monitoring would not be so widely deployed if there were no perceived benefits to the employer. For instance, these various types of workplace monitoring enable employers to observe employees' good behavior so that employees can be rewarded (Marx, 1996, pg 318). Conversely it allows inappropriate behavior to be either punished, perhaps by immediate termination, or preferably it permits employers to identify possible deficits in their training so that employee behavior can be improved. It also allows for employees to correct honest mistakes once they are brought to their attention by their employers. For instance if an employer is monitoring customer service calls, employees can listen to their own calls to judge themselves against the company's standards instead of being judged by a manager.

Many employers argue that workplace monitoring, such as video surveillance and electronic entry systems, enables them to protect their employees not only from intruders but also from themselves. For instance, in The Case of the Omniscient Organization Gary Marx writes of an instance where an employee had a heart attack and when the employee failed to check in at the next workstation, security personnel were dispatched to investigate (Marx, 1996, pg 321).

Employers are also able to protect their employees by monitoring their driving habits through systems installed in company vehicles. Not only will these devices ensure that employees drive safely but they also allow employers to ensure that their vehicles are appropriately maintained.

Workplace monitoring also enables employers to avoid 'hostile environments' and provide harassment free workplaces for their employees. They do so by blocking inappropriate websites and emails which may offend some employees. This monitoring also prevents defamatory, political, or religious statements sent outside the office from being attributed to an employer, as emails often carry an employers name or their trademark (Li, web). Likewise, this same technology is used to protect company trade secrets from being leaked to competitors.

While there are many reasons for introducing workplace monitoring the Privacy Foundation's research indicates that '[the] low cost of the technology, more than any other factor, is driving the growth of e-mail and Internet surveillance in the workplace.' At $10 an employee, installing workplace software is a very cheap mechanism for exerting control over one's employees (Schulman, 2001, web).

Just as there are many arguments for workplace monitoring there are many against. A report in 1997 by the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment found that 'there is reason to believe that electronically monitoring the quantity or speed of work contributes to stress and stress-related illness' (Stanford, 2000, web). Stressful working conditions may include 'heavy workload; repetitive tasks; social isolation; and fear of job loss; these are exacerbated by the lack of job involvement or participation, and lack of organizational support' (Levy, 1994, web). This is confirmed by circumstantial evidence quoted on Stanford's Monitioring In The Workplace website. They cite an instance where 'turnover climbed to almost 100 percent after "a large retail chain" implemented automated monitoring of its collections staff'.

Not only does workplace monitoring affect stress levels of employees but it also negatively affects their morale. This is because when workplace monitoring is used to reward 'individual goals rather than team goals [it] destroys the spirit of community among workers' (Standford, 2000, web). Instead of employees working together to achieve company goals they work in isolation and the company loses the benefit of what might be accomplished if people worked collectively; companies are more than the sum of their employees.

With electronic monitoring it is very easy to automatically monitor quantity of work produced but very difficult to measure the quality. When emphasis is then placed on the easy to measure quantity, quality of work begins to suffer, especially when employees are stressed and their morale is low. This can result in employees cutting service calls short to ensure that they are meeting their quotas at the detriment of the company's customer service (Stanford, 2000, web).

Once in place, it is easy for workplace monitoring to begin to overstep the bounds of its original purpose. In addition to monitoring business-related information employers can now monitor previously private information about their employees. Not only can company's violate their employees' privacy, a right even the government does not have, but the information found can then be used to discriminate against employees leading to the silencing of whistleblowers, union organizers and other dissidents (Stanford, 2000, web). Had effective workplace monitoring been implemented at companies such as Enron and WorldCom perhaps those companies could still be defrauding the public today.

The majority of arguments against electronic monitoring are concerned with protecting workers. However, one reason organizations may not want to implement monitoring is to protect themselves. They may be unaware that with these systems 'organizations may be inadvertently stockpiling large amounts of potential evidence that could be used against them in future litigation' (Schulman, 2001, web).

Consider next the power imbalance created by the perception of continual observation. The Panopticon prison was originally conceived by English Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham. He envisioned a prison that allowed monitoring of prisoners by guards without the guards being seen. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault the Panopticon was designed to ensure 'surveillance which would be both global and individualizing' (Foucault, 1977, pg 148).

In his paper Electronic Monitoring in the workplace, Michael Levy discusses Michel Foucault's development and adaptation of Bentham's Panopticon. He writes, 'the individual internalizes the norms and values of the organization or institution and becomes a party to her own subjugation.' If we look at the modern workplace as a Panopticon then we can apply Foucault's argument that, '[employees] should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers'. Michael Levy also writes:

The beauty of the electronic Panopticon is the cooption of the worker into the very system that is used to administer control and discipline. Management trends such as "work teams" and "Total Quality Management" are primarily means to more effectively run a capitalist enterprise. Feedback of information gathered from monitoring allows workers to compare themselves to others, to be notified of their place in the hierarchy, to judge their performance against the objective rules and standards determined by the business.

Therefore the real power over the strategic and moral direction of a company is left in the hands of the few at the top who control the monitoring system and develop the rules which instill the necessary values in the employees in order to produce. This turns previously democratic companies into autocratic ones and increasingly turns workers into a commodity, watched and monitored just as extensively as a factory machine.

According to the American Management Association, only one-fifth of employers disclosed that they were watching employees (AMA, 2001, web). With such a small percentage of employers disclosing their monitoring policies to employees it is imperative that at the very least employers disclose their policies on workplace monitoring and surveillance. Monitoring unknowingly creates a hostile work environment when employees inevitably discover that they are being monitored and in fact it may even be illegal in some districts for employers to monitor without the consent of their employees. To prevent this, employers may want, in addition to having a public disclosed policy, to go so far as to have each computer being monitored have a prominently displayed message detailing exactly what information will be monitored on that computer.

More progressive companies should have an open dialogue with their employees, enabling employees to influence and play a part in the creation of a monitoring policy. A jointly created policy should include a clause allowing employees to view their profiles on a daily basis so that they are aware of not only what information is being collected on their work habits but so that they can add comments to their habits to address any questions that the monitoring managers may have. Of course some employers after meeting with their employees may decide that the best policy would be to have no monitoring policy at all.

But even with a fair policy created jointly by employers and employees, there must be legislation in place to protect the privacy rights of the employee, just as there is legislation for the health and safety of employees.

In the United States, employees of private companies do not enjoy any kind of protection against monitoring even covert and surreptitious monitoring. The only limit to workplace monitoring in the U.S. is the Electronic Communications Privacy act introduced in 1986 which protects employee's personal conversations. However, this federal law only protects spoken conversation and leaves employers free to monitor personal email and Internet usage. Employers are even free to go so far as to request blood and urine samples.

While the legal situation in the U.S. clearly favors the employer at the cost of the employee's privacy, it can not be assumed that the situation in Canada is similar. In fact, while issues of workplace monitoring are relatively un-tested by the Canadian judicial system, lawyer Charles Morgan of McCarthy Tétrault concludes that, '[Canadian] courts will likely find that such surreptitious or non-consensual monitoring of employee e-mail and Internet use constitutes a breach of fundamental privacy rights.' (Morgan, 1999, web)

Workplace monitoring and surveillance is not only a growing business but it is also a growing concern for employers, employees, and also for governments. For relatively low cost employers are able to monitor the behavior of their employees and reward, punish, and improve it accordingly. However, employers often ignore many of the negative effects of monitoring such as a more stressed and less productive workforce. With monitoring systems in place it is easy and surprisingly legal (in the US, not in Canada) for employers to overstep the bounds and invade their employees' personal privacy.

Relatively simple measures such as involving employees in the discussion of whether to monitor or not, what to monitor and how to monitor go a long way to dealing with the negative issues surrounding monitoring. None-the-less, governments cannot knowingly and willingly allow private enterprise to turn their workplaces into Panopticon prisons. Governments must act pro-actively to protect their citizens not just from undue and unwarranted violations of their privacy but also from the loss of their rights to actively participate in the operation of our economy.

References

American Civil Liberties Union. (1998). "Legislative Briefing Kit: Electronic Monitoring." http://www.aclu.org/WorkplaceRights/WorkplaceRights.cfm?ID=9079&;c=179

American Management Association. (2001). AMA Survey "Workplace Monitoring & Surveillance Summary of Key Findings." http://www.amanet.org/research/pdfs/ems_short2001.pdf

Foucault, M. (1972-1977). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings

Levy, M. (1994). "Electronic monitoring in the workplace: Power through the Panopticon." http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/impact/s94/students/mike/mike_paper.html

Li, H. "Electronic Mail Privacy in the Workplac.e" http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/hanl/EMP.htm

Lyon, D. (1994). The electronic eye: The rise of the surveillance society. University of Minnesota Press.

Marx, G. (1996). "The Case of the Omniscient Organization." Computerization and Controversy

Morgan, C. (1999). "Employer Monitoring of Employee E-mail and Internet Use." http://www.mccarthy.ca/pub_docs/docview.asp?file=mon%2Drid3%2Ehtm&;language=0

Schulman, A. (2001). "One-Third of U.S. Workforce under Internet/E-Mail Surveillance." http://www.privacyfoundation.org/workplace/business/biz_show.asp?id=70

Schulman, A. (2001). "Client or Server: A Primer on Employee Monitoring Technology." http://www.privacyfoundation.org/workplace/technology/tech_show.asp?id=60

Schulman, A. (2001). "The Extent of Systematic Monitoring of Employee E-mail and Internet Use." http://www.privacyfoundation.org/workplace/technology/extent.asp

Stanford University. (2000). "Monitoring In The Workplace." http://cs-education.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/current/Projects/electronic-monitoring/