Title:
Electronic Surveillance in the Workplace: Does it Really Work?
Abstract: Who’s watching and how they do it? In a recent New
York Times edition , John Markoff and Tom Zeller pointed the multiple issues
raised by the rapid growth of computerized systems in our live. The tools
may not be new but they are increasingly used as a way to collect, record,
retrieve and analyze information on people behaviour. This capacity to keep
a permanent account on facts or events by (electronically) writing them
down lead both authors to worry about a possible usage of information technologies
(IT) by government agencies as a way to limit civil liberties. The
“does it really work?” question behind this issue is not new, especially
when it comes to the role of electronic surveillance (or monitoring) in the
working place. Electronic surveillance (ES) can be defined as a system in
which every task processed through an electronic media can be recorded, stocked
and analyzed by an individual who is located away from where the action initially
took place (based on Davidson and Henderson, 2001) .
Author: Jacques Boulay