HR must know when employee surveillance crosses the line: The debate over internet monitoring at work rages on, and HR not only must know the issues, but should be part of the decisions on whether to monitor

Workforce, Feb, 2002 by Eilene Zimmerman

John Fox is a senior technical analyst at Sapphire Technologies, an IT placement firm in Woburn, Massachusetts. He's the man to call when the server is down, the network fails, or the system crashes. He's also the guy to call if someone at the company is sending harassing e-mails or viewing porn sites.

Fox is Sapphire's tech-enabled Big Brother. A year and a half ago, the company installed both e-mail and Internet monitoring systems from Elron Software in Burlington, Massachusetts. The e-mail product, Message Inspector, is set up using triggers--certain words, video files, or attachments--that, when detected, forward the message immediately to Fox for review. The Web component of the monitoring system automatically blocks graphically explicit sites, and if an employee tries to go to a blocked site, Fox is notified. Using parameters given to him by human resources, essentially to block hardcore porn and violence sites, Fox can veto the block, which sometimes occurs automatically because a certain word, say "naked," appears on a Web page too many times.

The majority--57 percent--of U.S. companies now monitor their employees' e-mail and Internet use, according to IDC, a technology research and analysis firm in Framingham, Massachusetts. And the number is expected to rise substantially in the next couple of years. Large companies are more likely to monitor their employees than small ones: at the end of 2001, 70 percent of firms with 1,000 or more employees had implemented electronic monitoring systems. For companies of any size, the decision on whether or not to read an employee's e-mail and monitor his or her Internet activity is highly emotional and intensely controversial.

Employers say they monitor to increase productivity and to protect themselves from potentially disastrous computer viruses, harassment lawsuits, and leaks of confidential information to competitors. An IDC survey conducted in the fall of 2001 reports that 48 percent of the employers who monitor employees say that their intention is to protect against viruses and the loss of information; 21 percent as a way to limit legal liability.

Many employees, privacy rights experts, and workers' rights advocates, however, are angered and offended by the monitoring trend. They argue that privacy is a guaranteed human right--at home and at work. They say workplace monitoring is an unnecessary infringement on that right. A recent Privacy Foundation study found that 14 million U.S. workers are already subject to continuous monitoring while online. The nonprofit Denver-based organization studies communications, technologies, and services that may pose a threat to privacy.

Lewis Maltby, president of The National Workrights Institute Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey, says the most frequent complaint his organization hears from workers is that employers don't distinguish between personal and workplace communications. "They look at everything," he says.

George Baroudi is vigorously opposed to the use of electronic monitoring. He is chief technology officer and an Internet security expert at iLabyrinth, a company that develops network security systems headquartered in Hockessin, Delaware. "The Internet is a tool for learning, not a way to invade privacy," he says. "Just as the United States Postal Service is permitted to deliver your mail but not open it, e-mail is the property of the recipient, not the message carrier."

Proponents of monitoring challenge that point of view, and insist that they are only looking at e-mails that signal a problem--such as sexual harassment or a predilection for child porn, and are not endorsing personal snoop squads.

For many corporate decision-makers, a potential violation of privacy rights and the possibility of stunting creativity are minor concerns compared to the advantages of monitoring. That's why the market for monitoring and filtering software is growing by about 36 percent a year, and revenue in the industry is expected to triple in the next three years, according to IDC.

Although companies have different reasons for monitoring, Fox says Sapphire began the practice as a way of preventing potential legal problems. If one employee makes allegations about another employee's behavior, for example, checking e-mail correspondences can substantiate the charge.

Fox notes that, despite company warnings, three people at Sapphire have been fired for spending time surfing adult-oriented Web sites. The company reminds its 350 employees that they are being monitored each time they log on to the network. Fox says that no one has quit because of the monitoring, and that he has heard only a few complaints from employees about violations of privacy rights. "Generally, people know that if they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about."

Bart Lazar, a partner in the high-tech group at the Seyfarth Shaw law firm in Chicago, says smart employers do monitor e-mail and Internet use in some way, shape, or form." Lazar was lead counsel for GeoCities in 1998 in the country's first Internet privacy suit. The Federal Trade Commission sued GeoCities, arguing that the company took consumer information collected on its Web site and disclosed that information to a direct mail marketing company. (GeoCities eventually settled with the FTC.)