SAMPLE OP-ED COLUMN
ON ELECTRONIC MONITORINGGail Nelson never wanted to be a porno star. She was shocked when she found out that her employer, Salem State College, had secretly videotaped her changing her clothes in her office after work. Why they did it and how many men have seen the tape she is still trying to find out.
Ms. Nelson is not alone. Across the country, employers are installing secret cameras and hidden microphones to spy on their employees. The Boston Sheraton was caught red handed installing a video camera in the employees' locker room. Northern Telecom, a Fortune 1000 manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, tapped the pay phones in the employees' cafeteria and put bugs in the sprinkler system. Epson Computers secretly read all their employees' e-mail after promising that all messages were confidential. A school in Arizona installed a hidden camera in the principal's shower. Almost all of these practices are legal according to current laws.
Why are employers doing this? In part, as the old joke goes, because they can. Some employers have always been suspicious and mistrustful of their employees, but were unwilling to pay the substantial cost of hiring a private investigator to install expensive surveillance equipment. But the cost of spying gear, like the cost of VCRs and personal computers, has fallen like a rock. They have also become user friendly. A nosy boss can now buy a surveillance camera out of petty cash and install it himself.
In part it's a shortsighted and meanspirited response to the new competitive pressures faced by employers. To survive and prosper in the new global economy, American companies have to become more productive and efficient. But instead of meeting this challenge by giving their employees the equipment and training they need to boost their performance and making them real partners in the business, far too many employers cling to the old command and control mentality and use surveillance technology to keep the employees in line.
For whatever reasons employers do it, it's wrong. People have the right to go to work without wondering whether there's a video camera in their bathroom or a microphone hidden in their office ceiling. This is America, not the former Soviet Union.
Our lawmakers have done virtually nothing to protect us from these abuses. Federal wiretapping laws place some restrictions on employers' ability to eavesdrop on personal telephone calls, but when it comes to hidden cameras, e-mail monitoring, and other forms of surveillance, it's open season on employees.
As bad as the situation is, it is likely to get even worse. Some employers have begun to monitor the web sites their employees visit. An incest survivor or Alcoholics Anonymous member who checks in with their support group over lunch may find that their employer learns all about their most private secrets. There is even a new technology, called back scatter, that can see through the clothes of anyone who stands in front of it- an electronic strip search.
Lawmakers need to protect us from these abuses, and do it now. We need strong national and state legislation requiring that any monitoring be related only to work activities and that notice be provided to employees as to when and where monitoring is to occur. Otherwise, the right to personal privacy may end up in museums along with the dinosaurs and the hoola hoop.
