22 Federal and State Law Enforcements Role to Enforce Computer-Based Crime

Law Enforcement and Computer-Based Crime

Before beginning any discussion regarding the consequences of employee monitoring, it is crucial to first develop a working knowledge of precisely what this blanket term actually entails. Simply put, employee monitoring is deliberate surveillance by an employer which is used to track various behaviors, such as a worker's visitation rate to certain websites, as well as to transcribe and archive written correspondence in the form of emails while continuously observing their actions. It is the responsibility of each employer to decide where their business will lie within the gamut of employee monitoring philosophies, with many companies simply banning visitation of "cyberloafing" sites such as Twitter and Facebook while others methodically scan and document each touch of a workplace keyboard. While there are literally hundreds of types of employee monitoring available to businesses, from transparent voluntary programs to the most invasive reconnaissance campaigns, almost all major American corporations elect to make use of the practice in one manner or another. The majority of scientific study as to the efficacy of employee monitoring suggests that companies have long been disposed to track the behavior of those in their employ, and "a 1996 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 36% of responding companies searched employee messages regularly and 70% said employers should reserve the right to do so" (Schulman 1998). The overwhelming expression of support for recording employee's emails and private messages, given as it was during the infancy of the online age, was a telling prelude to the mounting legal and ethical uproar which has embroiled the corporate world regarding its use of employee monitoring.

Judging merely by the level of rancor which has surrounded the employee monitoring debate in this country, it is evident that the practice arouses strong opinions for both employers and employees alike. Recently concluded research of employee monitoring conducted by business ethicists Kirsten Martin and R. Edward Freeman concludes that "each advocate has its own rationale for or against employee monitoring whether it be economic, legal, or ethical," before concluding, "no matter what the form of reasoning, seven key arguments emerge from the pool of analysis" (Martin and Freeman, 2003). The scholars determined that there are seven main areas of dispute concerning employee monitoring which they term the privacy, productivity, security, creativity, liability, paternalism and social control arguments. Serious study of the effects that these seven components have on employers and workers is the only to properly ascertain the necessary role of employee monitoring while also assessing its worth to an ever adapting corporate structure.

The matter of productivity lies at the center of most employee monitoring debates, simply because most employers consistently assert that use of the internet and communication with peers via social networking serve as a constant source of disruption, often resulting in a mutual decrease in productivity and office efficiency. Advocates of employee monitoring base their support on statistical evidence like that compiled by internet research firm WebSense, whose polling found that "in 2001, 60.7% of employees surveyed said they visit Web sites or surf for personal use at work" (Martin and Freeman, 2003), to bolster assertions that tracking employee behavior is indispensable. The term cyberloafing has even been added to the American vocabulary, describing "the act of employees using their companies' Internet access for personal purposes during work hours" (Lim, 2002). Employee monitoring systems devised to eliminate internet abuse by workers inherently involve the restriction of an employee's access to only screened and approved websites, or even archiving an individual's website traffic for approval by managers, and this invasive methodology has provoked a rising call for ethical and legal reform in terms of personal privacy within the workplace.

The assurance of personal privacy guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Constitution has been severely destabilized by the advent of technology within all aspects of society, and the workplace especially has become a battleground in the fight for to preserve privacy. Detractors of employee monitoring condemn the regular invasions of privacy that are a vital function of website tracking software, email recording devices and other employee supervision tools. Employee advocacy groups consistently argue that the creation of personal correspondence, as well as the use of online media outlets, is a right protected by an individual's personal expectation of privacy, despite who claims ownership of computers and other equipment being used. Conversely, the right to gather, assemble and manipulate the raw data collected or generated by a worker is legally reserved by corporations as a privilege reserved for them as stewards of the property in question. In spite of the protestations of "opponents (who) argue that employee monitoring decreases the amount of control employees have over their own information through unrestricted access" (Martin and Freeman 2003), federal law and other local statutes have unfailingly upheld the ability of a company to monitor the behavior of workers they choose to employ.