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Internet and privacy issues
Internet and privacy issues
Internet and privacy issues
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Employee Privacy Report 1
In this report, I will be addressing e-mail, Internet use, and privacy policies in my workplace; the current laws regulating employee e-mail and Internet privacy; the reasons to companies carry out e-mail and Internet use policies; the assumptions employees make about their privacy at work; and how these policies affect employee privacy at work.
E-Mail and Internet Use , Privacy Policies
The E-mail/Internet usage and privacy policies at my job are part of a system of written decisions established by the organization to support and to build a desire culture through managing risk, regulation, and administration. They are current regulatory policies that happen within the workplace. The written guidelines help people keep up the integrity of business organization. The policies allows the organization to limit the discretion of person; to regulated; and arrive at certain types of behavior whether behaviors are good or bad. They tell every one of the written standards of conduct that governed the company's e-mail usage, internal usage, and its privacy policies within the company. They establish responsibilities; standards of behavior; and obligation of the policies. Current laws regulating employee e-mail and Internet privacy are few because employers usae electronic surveillance.
Why E-Mail and Internet Policies
My workplace is government-owned. The government employers require notified employees that the organization check and watch employees' use of the e-mail /Internet. For example, upon accepting employment with the federal government, the federal government notified that the person that there is monitoring of the Email/Internet usage. The monitoring covers the telephone, co...
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...ffect Employee Privacy
Policies affect employee privacy by lowering employees' expectations of privacy in the workplace because he or she cannot expected privacy if an employee conducts the activity in a manner open to other employees. If an employee's reasonable expectations are similar to the privacy of personal mail delivered from the post office, he or she may believe the computer are just as private as the documents that he or she stored in the personal workplace's desk or filing cabinet. This reasoning of employee's reasonable expectations violates the employee's privacy. Yet, the employer stands may be that it has a justifiable interest in the oversight of business related employees communications, and in the cost of the used of the computer system. Only through consideration will these two interests will allow the right determination to be determine.
The main points that are stated in "Employees & Ethics With Computers" by Debra Kraft are personal internet usage, email, harassment, privacy, policies, and training. Kraft's computer ethics relate to the Ten Commandments of Ethical Computing by Computer Ethics Institute. The first computer ethic personal internet usage would fall under multiple commandments such as number two, seven, and ten. If employees are using the internet access for personal internet usage it can slow down and hinder the company connectivity for the entire organization. Email is also a computer ethic that falls under a few the commandments such as one, two, seven, and nine. Improper usage of email service can cost the company in data or business losses.
Employers monitor email accounts and company computers mainly for two reasons. Reason one is that they don’t want their employees wasting company time for personal use. In most places, that is considered a very good reason, because if an employee is using company time for personal things, then work isn’t being done. Then it causes problems for everyone. Reason two is that employers want to make sure that employees aren’t doing anything illegal through either email or other internet sites.
In my opinion, employees should not be able to use the internet while at work. The computers and networks are business property and are solely used for business transactions. Thus, employers have a duty and a right to ensure proper usage of any, and all, equipment. If employers decide to, they may choose to monitor the usage of the internet to ensure the property is not abused. According to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC 2510, et. seq., (www.law.cornell.edu/uscode), federal law allows employers to monitor business calls, however, personal calls are an exception. Under the federal law and employer only has the right to monitor a call until they realize that it is a personal call then must cease monitoring. In the case of Watkins v. L.M. Berry & Co., 704 F.2d 577, 583 (11th Cir. 1983), the court dictated that, "...a manager must cease listening in on an employee call once the call turns personal". When businesses first started using the internet, they did not contemplate developing new technology policies and were very liberal as to the usage of the internet. Eventually allowing liberal usage led to abuse of equipment and work time. Today, people check personal emails and facebook messages (among other social networking sites), take care of online banking, shopping, surf the net leisurely, and chat online. Employers have noticed this distraction severely impacted productivity and performance. Studies show, "Currently, as many as 26 million workers in the United States are monitored in their jobs, and this number will increase as computers are used more and more within companies and as the cost of these monitoring systems goes down" (DeTienne, 1993, p. 33). "By the end of the decade, as many as 30 milli...
Ball, K., Daniel, E. M., & Stride, C. 2012. Dimensions of employee privacy: an empirical study. Information Technology and People, 25(4), 376-394.
In today’s world, technology is extremely advanced and continues to progress with new innovations. As new technology is created, personal privacy diminishes. The newest technologies make informational property easily accessible; therefore, privacy violations have recently become more prevalent. Property such as computer emails, documents, etc. are specifically put at risk due to the advancement of technology. Although personal emails and other aspects of one’s computer should have set privacy boundaries, computers and email addresses distributed by a corporation should be subject to monitoring. Employees should not expect privacy of any means on their work-mandated computer, especially in regard to emails. Although employees may feel violated by email monitoring, they are simply distracted by a false expectation of privacy. Despite these concerns, employers should have the right to monitor employee email because the motive to protect company liability, reputation and tangible assets is legitimate.
How much information should be collected on employees and prospective employees? Collecting information presents risks that employers will be faced with when employees commit torts outside the scope of their jobs. Also, not collecting the proper information could result in risks depending on the case. These questions will be analyzed based on collected data and employer actual or constructive knowledge. In order to precisely elaborate about the risk and such, I will look at the employee monitoring at work, Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, and respondeat superior.
Print Lazar, Wendi S. “Limitations to Workplace Privacy: Electronic Investigations and Monitoring” Computer and Internet Lawyer (2012): SIRS. Web. The Web. The Web.
Does this sound common? This may sound common because the issue of E-mail and privacy is very common and controversial in our advanced technological world. The determination of what is ethical or unethical is not simple or straightforward. Employers and employees may have seen the ethical and legal issues associated with E-mail privacy differently. E-mail has become indispensable in the modern=day workplace, more often employers are realizing that E-mail communication systems can increase the efficiency of communications internally. Along with this increase in the use of E-mail come legal issues involving employee privacy and monitoring. The laws addressing an employer's rights to monitor E-mail traffic and employees' rights to E-mail privacy are still evolving (Lyford 28).
Ultimately, however, surveillance is only a tool that can be used both ethically and unethically. Employee monitoring, consumer data collection, and government surveillance provides great benefits, including improving company efficiency, providing commercial and health values, and protecting the nation from threats. However, when considering the extent to which surveillance can be done, the rights of the people affected must be taken into account. Finding the right balance between these two views is the key to maximizing the benefits of everyone involved.
You get to work, login, check your email, and examine the values of your stocks. Have you done something wrong? Should your manager care about what you do with those couple of minutes? Hypothetically, if you consider 48 working days per year, with 40 hours per weeks (totally 9,600 hours of work a year), then the daily five minutes of personal internet usage mounts to approximately 24 hours (three working days) of wasted company time. In a capitalist economy, such inefficiency impedes the goal to maximize profit; therefore, compelling businesses to turn to rigorous surveillance to discourage inappropriate use of company resources and to promote productivity. As the American legislative and judicial culture has generally upheld companies’ proprietary rights to monitor their employees at the expense of employees’ privacy, civil libertarians have protested to what they claim to be direct violation of the employees’ right to privacy, which the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment implicitly guarantee.
Wen, J., Gershuny, P., & Schwieger, D. (2007). Internet usage monitoring in the workplace: its legal challenges and implementation strategies. 24(2), 185-196. doi: 10.1080/10580530701221072.
Workplace privacy is one of the biggest issues facing businesses today. Do you feel like you are being watched all the time, all your e-mails being read, and every key stroke is being monitored by your boss? Some people feel this way and that is why privacy in the workplace is a problem with many businesses today. Employees feel like they are not being trusted, or feel the company invades on their personal privacy, or violates their fourth amendment rights. On the other hand many businesses have many federal and state laws to follow, and must keep their assets safe, and their employees. Technology makes communications of all sorts as easy as a few pushes of a button. This technology makes it easy for an employer to monitor an employee in almost any fashion, from e-mails to video surveillance. This will make it easy for an employee to abuse the technology the company lets the employee use. Employers need and have the right to monitor their employees to avoid legal liability, as a result of harassing of offensive communications, security concerns relating to intentional or accidental release of sensitive data, and for safety concerns for there employees and business assets. Employees give up their right to privacy as soon as they walk through the door.
Your policy should prohibit unauthorized encryption of information such as email on business computers, such as with solutions like PGP. There is no clear rule about employer access of password-protected employee accounts, and some courts have prohibited employers from accessing them.
"Electronic monitoring has deep ethical implications with respect to workplace outcomes such as employee perceptions of privacy rights, fairness judgments, quality of work-life, and stress-related illness." (Alder, Schminke, Noel, Kuenzi, 2008, p. 481). Most of the ethical implications of employee monitoring fall under an employee's idea of morality. An employee may feel that it is unethical to invade their privacy, even though that employee is using company property. "A common reaction to the suggestion that employers may monitor such internal (to the firm) communications is that this is an abridgement of the constitutional right to free speech guaranteed by the first amendment." (Hodson, Englander, & Englander, 1999, para
Our employees are advised to use our company’s internet connection for the following reasons: To complete their job duties. To seek out information that they can use to improve their work. To access their social media accounts, while conforming to our social media policy.Employees should: Keep their passwords secret always. Log into their corporate accounts only from safe devices. Use strong passwords to log into work-related websites and services.What is inappropriate employee internet usage?Our employees mustn’t use our network to: Download or upload obscene, offensive or illegal material. Send confidential information to unauthorized recipients. Invade another person’s privacy and sensitive information. Download or upload movies, music and