ARTelevision

You got away with it today.
That doesn't mean you'll get away with it tomorrow.
Don't fool yourself.
They know.
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More companies keeping tabs on employees
Many set up systems to monitor time on Web, block porn access
from the Baltimore Sun


When you're at work and take 10 minutes to post an item for sale on EBay, view the latest scores on ESPN or see how your stocks are faring, you probably don't think anything of it.

Perhaps you should.

Increasingly across the United States, employers have been monitoring what their employees are doing while they're on the clock -- including what keystrokes they make, what Web sites they surf and where they drive company- owned vehicles. And while workers nationwide aren't losing their jobs en masse because of playing when they should be working, it does happen.

The most common way employers have been monitoring employees, many people monitoring the invasion of employee privacy say, is by tracking their Internet usage.

"I think employers are really concerned about whether employees are using their time wisely or effectively," said Frederick Lane, author of "The Naked Employee," to be released May 1. "For instance, if it takes you, say, 20 minutes to select a DVD online and have it sent to your home, and two other employees do that, all of a sudden that's a lost hour of productivity for the employer."

Lane, a former attorney who lives in Burlington, Vt., said it's easy for someone to lose track of time online. But in the long run, he said, it's employers who lose out.

"The issuance of the Kenneth Starr report (about then-President Clinton) cost the American economy something like $250 million in productivity with people going online, etc., to read it," Lane said. "That's the kind of issue that employers are worried about."

Yet it's no secret most companies that monitor employees' Internet usage are looking primarily for one thing -- whether workers are accessing pornography or other offensive material through the Web.

Mark Cheskin, a Miami employee lawyer with Morgan Lewis & Bockius, a national law firm that has more than 300 lawyers in its Washington office, said he advises companies to be up front with employees about their monitoring practices.

Of course, not all employees heed warnings.

Cheskin said one of his clients, a commercial real estate developer, with operations in nearly all 50 states, distributed a policy to employees that said Internet usage would be monitored "because it has come to our attention that some of you are using it for pornography."

Just a week later, Cheskin said, a company human resources manager who worked in California was discovered to have visited more than 100 pornography sites.

"They said starting Monday we're going to start looking at Internet usage," Cheskin said. "Tuesday through Wednesday, he visited the sites. I think 90 percent of companies tell employees what sort of monitoring they're going to do. If you tell people up front, they can't complain when they get caught. But I think the point of the policy is to stop it, not to catch people."

Cheskin said he thinks most employers are reasonable when it comes to employee monitoring. "The boss is doing it, too," Cheskin said of an occasional nonwork-related Web search or telephone call.

"If someone is making a five-minute banking transaction on the Internet or a two-minute personal e-mail, they're not going to be in trouble," Cheskin said. "But if they sit there and do it all day, they're going to be in trouble.

It's the same thing with personal telephone calls. We all know some people abuse it."

Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program for the American Civil Liberties Union's national office in New York, said that while his office has gotten calls about employee monitoring for years, there really aren't too many laws protecting employees.

"The ugly reality is that there are really no laws that protect employees from having employers spy on their Web usage or their e-mail," Steinhardt said.

"Employers should exercise some common sense here and should respect the privacy rights of employees and be much less intrusive about what they're monitoring. We're all operating on a 24/7 schedule now, and people who engage in some personal business on the job do it because their personal time is increasingly limited. At a minimum, employers should notify employees that they're being monitored, and what employers monitor should be kept to a minimum."

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization in San Francisco that works to protect people's rights in the digital world, said she thinks most employers notify employees in some way of the monitoring.

"I think somewhere in the packet of information you get when you first join the company or when you first log on," they tell you, Cohn said.

Cohn said her organization hasn't really taken much initiative on the issue of employee monitoring.

"We haven't really done anything specific," Cohn said. "EFF is concerned that there is a level of surveillance on employees in the online environment that wouldn't be tolerated in the offline environment. If you had someone looking over your shoulder and following you to the bathroom and timing the amount of time you spent there, I think most people would find that to be inappropriate, but we now have digital technology that effectively does the same thing."

Cohn said she knows there are companies in Silicon Valley that are devoted to selling tools for surveillance, but she's not sure whether employee monitoring has reached the problem level yet.

What probably worries some employees most is that they usually don't know when the boss is watching.

"I would say that the trend is accelerating to a higher level every year, and employers want to make sure they're getting a full day's work for a full day's pay from their employees," said Richard Soloway, founder of NAPCO Security Systems. The Amityville, N.Y., company develops hardware and software products that are sold to professional security companies worldwide. NAPCO makes products that report burglaries, fires and illegal access into buildings or sections of buildings, Soloway said.

"As long as we've been in the business, the amount of employee surveillance is higher than it has ever been before, especially in the post-Internet age," Soloway said.

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How many people do you know who've been fired for unauthorized Internet usage at work?
I know a few.
They didn't think it was a problem until they found out it WAS.

Is there even a slim chance you may be lulling yourself into a false sense of security?

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Cynthetiq

I had to monitor people's productivity, and unfortunately I had to use tools like these to watch what they did. I didn't want to do it, but had not choice. I didn't invoke the use of them unless I was suspicious of what someone was doing.

Again, in another thread I mentioned that I had monitored their productivity. To some degree, if I thought they were on the phone all the time, or on the net surfing all day, I'd used the tools that were available to me, sucks yeah, but then again, if I didn't do it then my boss would have fired me and hired someone who would. I was hired to be a boss, not a friend, not a nice guy.

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I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not.

gov135

I know no friends who have been let go for such things.

But I do know one woman who was upset when she learned her and a coworker were taped changing clothes for the gym while at work. Here's the catch: they changed quickly in a storage room. The camera was there for anti-theft purposes.

MORAL: Whether it is over the Internet or anything else, you have no right to privacy once you cross the threshold of your place of employment.

juanvaldes

I can't wait to get my dog collar so they can monitor how long I goto the bathroom.

pangavan

The sad thing is that they almost have to do this. The way seizure laws are written a company could find its servers and work stations impounded to be examined

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He is, moreover, a frequent drunkard, a glutton, and a patron of ladies who are no better than they should be.

Spanky Johnson

Get this: my company locks down acess to everything except a list of pre-approved sites. The proxy blocks everything else. You can get additional sites added, but you have to fill out a request form and it takes several days. I often go home at lunch to search for technical information I need and then mail it to myself at work so I can have it the same day. Even with being so tightly locked down, my boss gets an automated e-mail every week (and I get a copy too) showing what sites I've visited and how many bytes were transferred from each. I don't really mind that, because I'm not about to go anywhere inappropriate or non-work-related. It would be nice to access the sites I need to do my job more quickly though.

Big Julie

The missus works at an in-bound call center, and they used to have pretty open internet access at their computers.
Until too many people decided the online games they were playing were more important than than the customers.
No more access.

Twenty years ago, people managed to make it through a work day without the web; why do they feel it is a 'right' today?
Once the clock is punched, it's not your time anymore, and management has the responsibility to keep track of how you are using their time.
Don't want to get in trouble for personal web usage at work? Don't do it.
'Doh!

rogue49

The boss I just got demote, used to comment on my bathroom breaks.
What an asshole.

As for the computer at work, I've disiplined myself
to the point I don't do web surfing there
and I don't have any personal favorites lying around.
(it helps that I'm only 5 minutes away, and I go home for lunch)

My cookies are always clean, I clear my history often.
And I've done a usage comparison report and I'm below most everyone else.

I don't want to give those bastards any ammo.

WhoaitsZ

I doubt many will agree, but such is my life.

You are a workplace and you don't want your boss knowing where you go while you are supposed to work? Geez. How do you cope with the serious issues you must have because fark or tfp or porn was denied to you while at work! woe for you!

i'm sorry, if there is nothing to do i say go surf, read a book, learn oranami (spelling), or something... but you are at work... not a playground.

I believe that the Boss should pay attention and if someone has a lot of time to kill, let him take a break if you don't have anything for him to do. but if he's supposed to work I don't expect the need to look in on him in the first place. that ends in high school.

phredgreen

i've been fired for comments on irc... wasn't a fair cop, but it was their business, so they do what they wanna.

nowadays, i have high speed internet at home, so surfing at work really dosen't have the same appeal as when i was on a dialup. when i'm really bored and have a lil downtime, i jump on metafilter and see if anything interesting is posted there, but it's not often... maybe a couple times a week for a few minutes at most.

too busy actually working the rest of the time.

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- Thomas Paine

SecretMethod70

I see absolutely nothing wrong with employers watching what their employees do on work computers on work time. Block certain websites, use keyloggers, backup bookmark files, whatever. They're paying you for it, they have a right to know.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

Fearless_Hyena

theres many sides to this story...i agree that companies should be able to do whatever they want, but i'll never agree that it's a good idea to actively restrict people's web browsing like that.

just about all of the reasons stated so far apply, but one thing employers rarely think about when doing this is that the workers will inevitably look for ways to circumvent these restrictions. however they do it, workers will actively look for ways to get around these limitations once they're imposed, and now the IT security guys have to worry about hackers coming from the INSIDE as well as from the outside!

the only situation where i can see that this MIGHT have some merit is when a company's internet bandwidth is so low that they must restrict it to cut down usage, or when workers are browsing so much all day every day that they're unable to do any work at all!! today both of those situations are highly unlikely though.

restrictions like this almost always end up working against themselves. it's just like enforcing a very strict password policy, one that requires you to choose a password thats so complex that the average Joe can't remember it and ends up writing it down on a post-it attached to his monitor...the policies enforced by IT actually end up working against 'em in the end.

mtsgsd

I work in IT so I can agree whole-heartedly that you better watch your internet use, because we are. Our network/internet guy has learned way more than he ever wanted to know about a lot of employees because he's had to check on them for some reason. That goes for email too. OTH, if you happen to work in the IT dept. all rules are off. I forget the latin, but as the saying goes, "who will watch over the custodians"? We can do pretty much as we please, while making sure no one else does. Guess that's why I'm on here while at work!

DEI37

Thing is, this isn't the only "lost productivity" activity going on in the workplace. I used to work at a dealership, and they probably lost 5-7 hours PER DAY to smoke breaks. Bathroom breaks, those are tough, because if you gotta go, you'd better. Those of course can be abused, but it's a tough one to crack down on.
But, yes, 'net usage can be a problem, and personal phone calls. But, if they are going to crack down on one, they need to hit 'em all.

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