Imprisoned at Work: The Impact of Employee Monitoring on Physical Privacy and Individual Liberty

Abstract

There are now a wide range of tools available to monitor employees, boasting sophisticated features like keystroke logging, geolocational tracking and video surveillance. From a legal perspective, employee monitoring is most commonly analysed in terms of the impact it has on an employee's control over their information and data, ie their ‘informational privacy’. This article argues that monitoring is a more complex and layered issue, requiring the consideration of other values as well. Specifically, we argue that there are two (by no means exhaustive) reasons why employee monitoring is concerning which go beyond the use of information and data. First, monitoring affects physical and spatial, not just informational, components of privacy. Second, monitoring can be so severe in extreme cases that it curtails individual liberty and constitutes a form of imprisonment. The article draws out the significant legal implications of each of these claims, while addressing counterarguments to our position based on employee consent and the idea that work has always involved constraints on individual freedom.