C2: Aren’t We Entitled to Some Kind Of Privacy? : Monitoring Employees in the Workplace

Everyone is entitled to the right of privacy in their workplace. You give your employer 100% of your best effort and complete your job assignments at work. You get a lunch break, you get a smoke break if you smoke, and bathroom breaks at your free will. There are cameras in your workplace, monitoring software on your computer that possibly is capturing your keystrokes without your knowledge, and the possibility of your phone calls being monitored because there is a label on your telephones stating “Consent to monitoring.” So do you really have privacy while you are at work?
With the advancement of information technology in the world, about every company that is around at this very moment, has performed some type of surveillance at some time or another in its course of operation. Employers argue that they have every right to protect their assets to ensure their company’s ability to thrive securely. Assets can be the trade secrets of a company, their network, confidential data, computer hardware, and lastly, its employees. Employers have a difficult decision of deciding the rights of their employees versus protection of themselves. Employers also feel that they have the right to monitor their employee’s internet usage, email, and telephone calls to prevent liability from sexual harassment within the company via email (inappropriate jokes) and to monitor computer usage for employee performance instead of second-hand reports from managers.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" (U.S. Const., amend. IV). (Rothstein, n.d.) What about the employee’s rights and protection? The Fourth Amendment is supposed to