AFFIRMATIVE — EMPLOYMENT — WORKPLACE SPYING — INHERENCY 283

POLITICAL CLIMATE HAS WEAKENED WORKPLACE PRIVACY

PRIVACY PROTECTIONS HAVE BEEN WEAKENED IN THE WORKPLACE

Rod Dixon, an attorney at the U.S. Department of Education, "With Nowhere to Hide: Workers are Scrambling for Privacy in the Digital Age," Journal of Technology Law and Policy, Spring 1999, 4 J. Tech. L. & Pol'y 1, EE2001-JGM, P.3

Unlike a few other employment law doctrines that have recently created legal uncertainty after they were repealed or drastically revised, the legal protections that exist as a result of privacy law doctrine are being overpowered by technological force, not legislative or judicial intervention. In other words, the prevalence of digital technology in the workplace implicitly constructs a new objective reality regarding expectations of privacy. Paradoxically, privacy protections have been significantly weakened, notwithstanding the apparent vitality of current privacy law. In the digital age, however, workplace technologies are so advanced and sophisticated that societal notions about the degrees of intrusiveness that a particular technology may pose are often based on unfounded or mistaken assumptions about the possible uses of digital technologies. n8 The failure of courts, in particular, to grasp the fundamental nature of digital technologies is especially troublesome regarding workplace privacy issues since many employers use digital technologies to surreptitiously monitor employees' activities. n9 When workers do not know they are being monitored, the right of privacy is presumptively eroded.

REPUBLICANS HAVE STOPPED WORKPLACE RIGHTS INITIATIVES

EVE TAHMINCIOGLU, St. Petersburg Times, February 01, 1999, SECTION: BUSINESS; COVER STORY; Pg. 11 TITLE: BUSINESS TOOL OR BIG BROTHER? // acs-EE2001

The ACLU's Workplace Rights Project is pushing for tougher laws.

"We had been working on federal legislation but when the Republican majority came into Congress that legislation died," said the ACLU's Gruber. Since then the group has been working at the state level with no specific plans to reintroduce a federal bill.

PRIVACY RIGHTS FOR WORKERS HAVE LOST GROUND IN RECENT YEARS

Barbara Ehrenreich; The New York Times, March 5, 2000, SECTION: Section 6; Page 88; TITLE: Warning: This Is a Rights-Free Workplace // acs-VT2001

In the area of privacy rights, workers have actually lost ground in recent years. Here, too, the base line is not impressive -- no comprehensive right to personal privacy on the job has ever been established. I learned this on my first day as a waitress, when my fellow workers warned me that my purse could be searched by management at any time. I wasn't carrying stolen salt shakers or anything else of a compromising nature, but there's something about the prospect of a purse search that makes a woman feel a few buttons short of fully dressed. After work, I called around and found that this, too, is generally legal, at least if the boss has reasonable cause and has given prior notification of the company's search policies.