...Having worked in transportation and having worked for the Chamber of Commerce in Northeastern Pennsylvania, the position taken of the debate on Communication Laws and Privacy Policies is almost a mute decision. Regrettably the decision would be for employer monitoring. The posts from my fellow classmates in this debate seem strongly one sided and rightfully so. The reasoning and ever growing technology and types of ongoing ways to improve surveillance for monitoring employees simply leaves the debate being for such laws and surveillance. In the first segment of the Electronic Readings “Privacy, Legislation, and Surveillance Software” It mentions the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, “the rights to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.” The explanation of why this amendment cannot interfere with the rights of employers to protect the interests of their property as well as protecting their investment in their employees. This statement and the exceptions provided by the Electronic Communication Privacy Act leaves little if any room to debate this topic. With companies losing billions of dollars a year in loss of productivity, law suits and sabotage employers have every right to protect their assets. I believe employee monitoring goes deeper than just monitoring employees and the implications of mis-handled information via internet. There have been too many scandals referring to this type of illegal mis-handling such as Wikileaks. If this type of mis-handled information...
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...XCOM285 December 21, 2012 University of Phoenix Privacy Laws and Policies Debate I have looked at both sides of the argument when it comes to communication privacy laws in the workplace. There are some good points to monitoring employees, that I read about such as “using monitoring as a positive aid for training, improving service, ensuring compliance, protecting employees, customers, and so forth, and to assist in fairly evaluating employee performance.” But If I have to choose a side I would go against monitoring employee’s computers, listening in on calls, and video surveillance. I think my biggest concern is the fact that many employers will go too far. There will be no privacy at all for the employee in the workplace, except in the restrooms. I think this total lack of privacy and lack of trust shows an employer has no respect for the employees. Employers need to consider the effect such monitoring has on their employees since employee and employer attitudes about monitoring often diverge. There should be a pretty good battle over this issue, what with so many people being concerned with their privacy, but on the other hand so many companies making big money on software that is used to spy on a companies’ employees. Software manufacturers in 2004 expected the sale of computer monitoring and surveillance software to businesses to increase from $139 million in 2001 to $622 million in 2006 (Wakefield 2004). There aren’t any constitutional or federal...
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...think workplace privacy laws and policies about monitoring emails, phone calls, and computer use should be in place within a company. The employer should be sympathetic and open to potential disagreements and questions which the employees may have about the reasons behind the workplace communication privacy laws and policies, including the protection of both the employer and the employees, the regulating state and federals legislations, the compliance expectations, and the potential consequences of non-compliance (Wakefield, 2006). When a company monitors its employees without employees being aware of it, it can bring down company moral and overall productivity. When the employees are aware from the start of employment that they will be monitored and communication privacy laws and policies are in their code of conduct the employees and the company can benefit from the program. The workplace communication laws and policies are viewed as ethical practice to protect the employee and the employer. Company use these laws and policies to monitor misuse of company transmissions such as: emails, internet use, telephones, and computers. Employees in turn need protection from employers who get in the way of employee privacy. Without the use of communication privacy laws and policies, employee may not be aware of what is acceptable use of company equipment. References Axia College of University of Phoenix. (2010). E-Monitoring in the workplace: privacy, legislation...
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...Google and Privacy Google, the popular search engine, has become an invaluable resource in the lives of many. The search engine’s ability to turn the chaotic warehouse of information that is the Web into a categorized and navigable tool has propelled Google to its current position at the heart of modern technological culture. Yet, Google has not been able to fly under the radar in terms of privacy. While its services are greatly valued, they are also the target of a significant amount of criticism. The right to privacy is a great individual concern and considering that there are over a billion unique Google users, the issue of possible privacy invasion is both an important and immediate one (citation). The privacy debate is complicated, however, by the fact that Google has deemed the traditional understanding of privacy invasion as outdated. By providing a valuable service that users trust at the risk of possible privacy invasion, Google has changed the way in which one thinks about privacy invasion. Experts agree that Google has an ability to attract users’ trust and information based on the benefits of the service it provides. According to Kevin Bankston, Google is expecting us to trust it (Mitchell 1). This complicates the privacy debate in that formerly potential privacy invasion was neither willingly entered into nor beneficial in any way. Michael Zimmer credits the convenience of Google as the reasoning for users’ unwavering trust and disclosure (citation). Meanwhile...
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...LS312 Unit 5 Debate Unit 5: Unit 5: The Employee Stakeholder - Debate Debate: Employee Monitoring Discussion Topic 1 of 1 Employee monitoring practices are often implemented without an employee's consent or awareness. With technological advances making a wide variety of stealth monitoring techniques available, organizations face a challenging balancing act considering legitimate business concerns while respecting their employees' right to privacy. In this assignment, you will debate the issue of workplace privacy with your fellow students. Use the following guidelines for the debate: First read the transcript of the NPR story on workplace cheating. Read the transcript of the National Public Radio feature "Shirking Work" Then examine the following four areas of workplace privacy according to the guidelines listed below: Drug testing Email privacy Telephone conversation privacy Personal privacy Team 1 Students whose last names begin with the letters A through K will be on Team 1. Assume that you are a manager of a small corporation and are responsible for implementing policies regarding the four areas of employee privacy listed above. Write your policy recommendations and arguments, defending each from a management point of view. Students in the A through K group should clearly indicate their position on the debate by beginning each Threaded Discussion post with the heading "MANAGEMENT VIEW." Team 2 Students whose last names begin with...
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...This paper outlines why security and privacy cannot be mutually exclusive. As we continue to advance with information and communication technologies, our society will require cyberlaws and the government needs to equip law enforcement with modernized tools to protect society’s most vulnerable in cyberspace. To achieve a happy medium between security and privacy, I propose the concepts of transparency, accountability, integrity, and professionalism in the security-privacy debate. Today, there are over three billion online users, which make up about 40% of the world population (ITU 2014). The users are online, conducting daily communications, transactions, and sharing of information. The Internet has created an increasing amount of personal...
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...T205: Introduction to Media and Society Exam 1: Study guide Week 1: Introduction to Media and Society 1. (a) Can you describe the information problem that we are facing? (b) What is automaticity? (c) How did automaticity develop in society? (d) What are the advantages and disadvantages of automaticity? (e) When do we consciously process information that is derived from the media? (f) How do advertisers and producers try to get around automaticity? 2. (a) What are the two ways we use the media? Which of these uses is more common? (b) What is the difference between automaticity and ritualistic media consumption? (c) How does our ritualistic use of media affect the way broadcasting is scheduled? How does the concept of inertia in viewing fit into those scheduling decisions? 3. (a) What is media literacy? (b) What are the three building blocks of media literacy? (c) What are the skills that media literacy requires? (d) What are the advantages of developing a higher degree of media literacy? Week 2: Media Audiences 1. (a) What are the three information-processing tasks in which we are constantly engaged? (b) How can these information-processing tasks be developed? (c) What is the difference between exposure and attention? (d) In what four states do people process media messages? Be able to explain each. 2. (a) What is the difference between subliminal and automatic processing? (b) Are we influenced by subliminal content? Why or why not? (c) Are...
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...The Economist Debates As data mining systems sophisticate, the protective walls guarding personal information privacy are becoming progressively more porous. Often, this is done in the name of security. One position states that assuring the security of a citizenry requires the loss of some personal privacy. Critics argue that the two are not inexorably linked but rather governments and corporations are excusing security as a means to gain greater degrees of personal information. Proposer: Mr Neil C Livingstone Believes that assuring the security of a citizenry requires the loss of some personal privacy The great novelist John Steinbeck once observed, "We spend our time searching for security, and hate it when we get it."1 Thus is our conundrum in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington which traumatised this nation and many of our friends and allies around the globe. Today we face unprecedented security risks to our lives and the fragile infrastructures we depend on to sustain our livelihoods and well-being. Our enemies are far more sophisticated than the stereotype of a bearded jihadist toting an AK-47 hunkered down in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan, an illiterate and superstitious Luddite eager to impose the nostrums and doctrines of the 7th century on the modern world. In reality, many jihadists are technologically sophisticated and linked together by the Internet, which they use to download information on our vulnerabilities and assist them...
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...Electronic surveillance in the workplace Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace: Concerns for Employees and Challenges for Privacy Advocates Anna Johnston and Myra Cheng Paper delivered 28 November 2002 International Conference on Personal Data Protection Hosted by Personal Information Dispute Mediation Committee, Korea Information Security Agency Seoul, Korea Ms Anna Johnston is the NSW Deputy Privacy Commissioner. Ms Myra Cheng is a Research & Policy Officer with Privacy NSW, the Office of the NSW Privacy Commissioner. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr Ben Searle, Macquarie University, in providing an overview of the relevant literature from the field of organisational psychology. Introduction This paper takes up the challenge of talking about privacy in the workplace - a site of potential conflict in which there may be co-existing radically different views on whether workers can or should have any expectations of privacy. As long as there has been employment, employees have been monitored. Nebeker D M & B C Tatum, "The effects of computer monitoring, standards and rewards on work performance, job satisfaction and stress" (1993) 23(7) Journal of Applied Social Psychology 508 at 508. However, in recent years, with an environment of affordable technology, the availability of less easily observable or detectable monitoring devices, and a lack of adequate regulation, there has been an explosion in the use of electronic monitoring...
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...the government and depriving the citizens their constitutional right to privacy. However, when posed with the question: Do people want to live in a surveillanced environment like animals in a zoo, with justice and safety ensured but privacy denied completely ? , the answers vary in the community. The revelation of the National Security Agency's massive surveillance of American citizens has prompted a debate about the constitutionality of the agency's actions. The policies of the the National Security Agency is said to be conflicting with the basic right of privacy guaranteed to citizens in the Fourth Amendment. The "metadata" collection carried out by the National Security Agency, including all kinds of personal records and assets along with a list of phone calls and electronic messages poses a challenge to the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Eavesdropping on people is a loaded feature of NSA: " It specializes in pretty much one thing, and that's eavesdropping on communications around the world, whether it's e-mail, cell phones, regular telephones--any kind of communications--and also in breaking codes" (Michele par. 4). The onset of the technological era led to digital network holding the upper hand on global communications network; this demand for a powerful and global presence in the communications network for mass protection of the citizens was met by the NSA. The government and NSA debates about rethinking their policies and authorities. The Fourth Amendment of...
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...Ethics and Privacy of Communications in the E-Polis Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic and Virginia Horniak Department of Computer Science and Electronics Mälardalen University Västerås, Sweden I N T R O D U C T I O N The electronic networking of physical space promises wide-ranging advances in science, medicine, delivery of services, environmental monitoring and remediation, industrial production, and the monitoring of persons and machines. It can also lead to new forms of social interaction [..]. However, without appropriate architecture and regulatory controls it can also subvert democratic values. Information technology is not in fact neutral in its values; we must be intentional about design for democracy. (Pottie, 2004) Information and communication technology, ICT, has led to the emergence of global web societies. The subject of this article is privacy and its protection in the process of urbanization and socialization of the global digital web society referred to as the e-polis. Privacy is a fundamental human right recognized in all major international agreements regarding human rights such as Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), and it will be discussed in the chapter under the heading Different Views of Privacy. Today’s computer network technologies are sociologically founded on huntergatherer principles. As a result, common users may be possible subjects of surveillance and sophisticated Internet-based attacks. A user may be completely...
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...Employee Monitoring Employee monitoring has been a topic of great debate for some time. Many employees feel that their rights have been infringed upon and as technology expands, employers have a lot more ways of monitoring their employees as well as a bigger responsibility to make sure employees are not leaking information electronically or just slacking off while they are at work. Employers now will begin monitoring an employee from the time they are screened for the job; social networking sites have made it a lot easier for an employer to look at the lives of the prospective employee to see if they feel that the person is a good fit for their company. Also many employers now will go and put monitoring software on their networks and computers so that they are able to see any information transmitted through their networks, such as e-mails, browsing history and chat sessions. Also an employer will take the time to monitor phone calls made from company phones as well as placing their employees on video surveillance. In order to sustain abiding by the law and working ethically, employers have to take many precautions when monitoring employees so that they do so legally. One method that most people are aware of are the terms and conditions that you usually either sign off on in an employee handbook to send into corporate or are part of the application process in some cases. These terms and conditions essentially say that you are aware that your employer may monitor you without...
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...Privacy ‘The Limits of Privacy’ and ‘The Case for privacy’ are written by Amitai Etzioni and David D. Friedman respectively. Both of them have opposite views about privacy, which Etzioni states that less privacy is good for us and Friedman claims that more privacy makes the world a better place. In this paper, I will argue that Etzioni’s argument fails because privacy is really important for us to protect ourselves. I am going to explain in detail based on three different points in the next three paragraphs. First, in ‘The Limits of Privacy’, Etzioni argues that privacy is not important as many other goods. Based on his argument, he claims that “there are numerous values that trump or take precedence over privacy” (p.254) such as safety. However, I totally disagree his standpoint. Although safety also considers as a part of importance, it does not mean that safety can take priority over privacy consideration. Privacy does have significance effect for us to protect ourselves. Some people may think that it is worth to sacrifice their individual privacy in order to get freedom for safety. Once you give up your own privacy and allow anyone like governments to access to your information freely, your information is disclosed and you cannot get them back anymore. For example, after 9/11 attack in the United States, a lot of new measures about surveillance are introduced. The government can have authorities to wiretap, record or trace orders for email made by all Americans. These...
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...Privacy Laws and Policies Debate Steven Donally XCOM/285 June 27, 2014 Donna Rossi Privacy Laws and Policies Debate I think there is a simple truth when it comes to privacy in the workplace: it doesn’t exist. Your employer has the right to view anything and everything you do on company equipment. They have the right to read your emails, listen to your phone calls and check you incoming and outgoing mail. I do not think this is a bad thing because you are using company equipment to do these things. If I am using a company computer to write a personal email or to browse the web, my employers have every right to monitor what I am writing and the websites I am visiting. Whether or not I am allowed to do these things is irrelevant. I am using equipment that does not belong to me in order to complete these tasks. Most companies have strict rules with regards to what you are and are not allowed to do with company property. I compare it to a company gas card. People who travel for their jobs are often issued gas cards to pay for their gas along the way. If my company issued me a gas card to use while I was on the road and I used it to buy gas for my personal car on my day off then I would probably lose my job. Much the same way that if I was browsing porn on my company computer I would more than likely be fired. The only way a company can prevent these things from happening is to monitor the...
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...registration—and in some ways, the beginning of the commercial Internet. Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission unveiled its long-awaited National Broadband Plan, which proposes ambitious subsidies to encourage broadband deployment. On the theory that unease about online privacy may discourage broadband adoption, the Plan also calls for increased regulation of how websites collect, and use, data from consumers. The debate over how to regulate online data use has gone on for over a decade, leading to today’s final “Roundtable” in the “Exploring Privacy” series held by the Federal Trade Commission over the last three months. The stakes in this debate are high: Data is the lifeblood of online content and services, and consumers will ultimately bear the cost of restrictions on data use in the form of reduced advertising funding for, and innovation in, online content and services. That’s why this week’s most important technology policy event may ultimately prove to be today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Rep. Barney Frank’s “Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009” (H.R. 4173), which narrowly passed the House in December without a single hearing and no real debate. Although the sprawling (273,579 word) bill is mostly famous for creating a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, it would also, in just 613 words, “put the FTC on steroids,” in the words of Jim Miller, FTC Chairman from 1981 to 1985. With vastly expanded powers, the FTC could impose...
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