Every Breath You Take

12 Pages 3040 Words

United States of America was founded on one fundamental tenet; freedom for the individual. One of the perquisites these freedoms afford American society is privacy. Most persons believe this privacy extends to our place of employment: the computer we use, the telephone calls we make, and the e-mail we send. In the United States, our privacy ends when we enter our place of employment, whether it is the physical space or the virtual network we connect to from home. The Internal Revenue Service defines the employer – employee relationship as;
“Every individual who performs services subject to the will and control of an employer, both as to what shall be done and how it shall be done, is an employee. It does not matter that the employer allows the employee considerable discretion and freedom of action, as long as the employer has the legal right to control both the method and the result of the services” (2005, para.1).

This statement by the Federal Government ensures the tacit authority of employers over their employees in the private sector.
The number of employees who work remotely is increasing rapidly and, as a result, the line where work ends and personal time has begun to blur. The question then becomes: where do the rights of the employer to monitor the employee begin and end? If a person is employed in the U. S. and has signed off on their company’s policy, he or she most likely has given the employer explicit authorization to read their e-mails (both work related and personal if sent using the corporate mail system), track their internet use, read their archived instant messaging, and videotape most of their movements while on company property, or while using company property. Employers in the U. S. have virtually autocratic power vis-à-vis right of ownership. The ownership of equipment extends beyond the “office” and this is often reflected in their corporate personnel policies. The Internet has crea...