NEGATIVE — EMPLOYMENT — WORKPLACE SPYING 304

THERE IS NO RECOGNIZED RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE WORKPLACE

PRIVATE EMPLOYERS ARE NOT BOUND BY THE FOURTH AMENDMENT

Stephan K. Bayens, attorney clerk, 2000; Drake Law Review, "THE SEARCH AND SEIZURE OF COMPUTERS: ARE WE SACRIFICING PERSONAL PRIVACY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF TECHNOLOGY?" EE2001-hxm lxnx

In assessing an employee's expectation of privacy in the workplace, it is important to distinguish between government employers and private employers. The distinction is important because in order to trigger the Fourth Amendment the search or seizure must be by a government or state actor. n12 Private employers are not bound by the constraints of the Fourth Amendment n13 unless their actions were at the behest of government officials. n14 Given this important distinction, an initial examination regarding areas of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that apply to both the government workplace and the private workplace is necessary. Only then can the unique government workplace settings be addressed.

COURTS AND LEGISLATURES HAVE FAILED TO DEFINE WHAT PRIVACY IN THE WORKPLACE IS

Margaret Graham Tebo, ABA Journal, March, 2000 TITLE: No Peeking: Efforts to restrict monitoring of workers' outside activities gain favor // acs-VT2001

The underlying problem is that courts and legislatures have failed to meaningfully define what the right to privacy is in the context of the workplace.

"Privacy is really an umbrella term for our society's fundamental values, such as autonomy, dignity and respect," says Craig Cornish, an employment attorney in Colorado Springs. "Right now, the rules are so vague and the courts are so insensitive to any rights of the employee, [that] employers are taking it as license to look into all sorts of personal information."