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Email, Instant Messaging, Global Positioning Systems, telephone systems, and video cameras have given employers new ways to monitor the conduct and performance of their employees. These technological advances have been instrumental in setting a significant growth trend in the United States, concerning employee monitoring. Employers now use monitoring devices to keep track of their employees' actions in hopes of increasing their productivity while decreasing their liability. In doing so, many employees feel this much monitoring is an invasion of their personal rights and violates their "privacy expectation". Consequently, this dilemma has created a necessity for finding a method to balance an employers' legitimate interest in monitoring employees conduct and performance with an employees' right to privacy. This can be done by establishing a monitoring policy which enforces both employer and employee privacy rights. In fact, this issue is now forcing the government to take a more pro-active approach in updating current privacy legislation.
Expansion of Employee Monitoring
Employee monitoring is the act of watching and monitoring employee's actions during working hours using employer equipment and property. (Mujtaba, B. G. 2003). Electronic monitoring in the American workplace has seen dramatic growth in recent years. Prior to 1980, electronic monitoring was virtually unknown. When the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment studied its use in 1987, only 7% of employees were affected. But only 6 years later, a MacWorld survey found the electronic monitoring had nearly tripled to 20% of employees. (Piller, C. 1993). In 2001, the American Man ...