COMPUTERWORLD reports :

With staff surveillance on the rise, high-tech types can be put in the awkward position of having to squeal on their fellow workers.

By Tam Harbert  June 16, 2010 06:00 AM ET

Computerworld - It's 9:00 in the morning, or 3:00 in the afternoon, or even 10:00 at night. Do you know what your users are up to?

More than ever, IT managers can answer "Oh, yes" to that query.

As corporate functions, including voice and video, converge onto IP-based networks, more corporate infractions are happening online. Employees leak intellectual property or trade secrets, either on purpose or inadvertently; violate laws against sexual harassment or child pornography; and waste time while looking like they are hard at work.

In response -- spurred in part by stricter regulatory, legal and compliance requirements -- organizations are not only filtering and blocking Web sites and scanning e-mail. Many are also watching what employees post on social networks and blogs, even if it's done from home using noncompany equipment.

They are collecting and retaining mobile phone calls and text messages. They can even track employees' physical locations using the GPS feature on smartphones.

More often that not, IT workers are the ones being asked to do the digital dirty work, primarily because they're the people with the technical know-how to get the job done, says Nancy Flynn, executive director of the ePolicy Institute.

Statistics are hard to come by, but Flynn and other industry observers agree that monitoring and surveillance are becoming a bigger part of IT's job.

Michael Workman, an associate professor at the Florida Institute of Technology's Nathan M. Bisk College of Business who studies IT security and behavior at corporations, estimates that monitoring responsibilities take up at least 20% of the average IT manager's time.

Yet most IT professionals never expected they'd be asked to police their colleagues and co-workers in quite this way. How do they feel about this growing responsibility?

Workman says he sees a split among tech workers. Those who specialize in security issues feel that it's a valid part of IT's job. But those who have more of a generalist's role, such as network administrators, often don't like it.

Computerworld went looking for IT managers who would share their experiences and attitudes, and found a wide variety of viewpoints, ranging from discomfort at having to "babysit" employees to righteous beliefs about "protecting the integrity of the system." Read on for their stories.

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Read the full article here.

What are your views on this?

I have rather strong views opposing the monitoring of private e-mails, IM and telephone calls for instance. I feel it is an invasion of privacy and immediately indicates that an employer distrusts their employees by implication.
How can a relationship of trust exist between the two parties in such circumstances?
An employee can for instance not request to monitor the same information related to their manager. It could also satisfy certain voyeuristic tendencies in certain people.

If governments need a warrant signed by a judge to for instance do a phone tap, why are employers exempt from this rule simply because they can put a clause into a contract?

It comes down to mutual respect and in my opinion employers who do this kind of monitoring are not respecting or trusting their employees.

Yes I suppose that's the other side of the coin and you make a valid point.

I would like to see the similar principles applied as exist with for instance law enforcement requesting a phone tap or needing access to records held by an ISP.
They need to build a reasonable enough case substantiated by some evidence of wrongdoing before a judge will grant an order allowing them to gain access to that information.

By the same token employers should not be allowed a blanket clause which allows them to monitor all communication by all employees.
If they suspect someone of for instance being involved in industrial espionage then let them put forward their evidence which needs to be critically evaluated before they can monitor an employee's communication.

I realize that there are cases where genuine breaches and problems exist, but the monitoring should be done selectively only where absolutely necessary.

The current situation of monitoring everything is much like the argument that "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of".
It's attacks the "Eternal Value of Privacy".

Bring a policy in where there is a division for investigations and where it can be measured. Make it nice and BOLD company policy that anyone requesting any invasion of digital content must come through a specific channel and any sup/man requesting this will face a no tolerance inquiry. This will give employees the assurance that they may speak up if such acts are requested from them and will somehow help with moral choices. If the processes are transparent and again if they can be measured and compared with what the law says we can/cannot do I think ICT companies can stop invasion of employee privacy dead in it's tracks.

 

There are no controls,

further to this there are companies who do this anyways, without the employee's consent. It is indeed true, the employers hold all the cards, and its not a good situation to be in, considering that they, true to form, become moody and want scenery changes i.e. get rid of faces they don't like anymore.