The American Management Association reported in 2003 that
over half of all US employers now monitor e-mail (quoted in Nord, G.D., McCubbins, T.F., & Nord, J.H.,
E-???Monitoring in the Workplace,??? Communications of the ACM, 49:8, August 2006, pp. 73-76.). Such monitoring
varies from storage of messages for later review, to active software surveillance.
There is very little legal constraint on the monitoring of employee communications when the communications
are carried on at work, on company time, using company facilities. Employers monitor such behavior
because they have an interest in employee productivity, because they want to protect trade secrets and company
data, and because they want to avoid liability for bad behavior by their employees (Nord et al. [2006] report that
over 10 percent of US companies have been subpoenaed as a result of employee e-mail!). The courts in most
cases support the employer??™s right to monitor, based on the employer??™s legitimate need to know.
As a software professional, the ACM Code of Ethics provides excellent guidelines for people collecting,
managing and reporting private information. They are summarized in section 1.7. Information professionals should:
?—? Protect the privacy of data.
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