Employee Surveillance
The ACLU works in courts, legislatures, and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and the laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.
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What's at Stake
New technologies are giving employers unprecedented abilities to monitor and watch their workers. Employers have a legitimate interest in monitoring work to ensure efficiency and productivity, but electronic surveillance often goes well beyond proper management concerns and becomes a tool for spying on employees in furtherance of no legitimate business interest. In some cases, employers have even demanded that workers turn over the passwords to their social media accounts.
The ACLU is working to ensure that workplace monitoring is narrowly tailored in time, place, and manner, that employers inform workers of all monitoring, and that even permitted intrusions are not used in a way that creates an atmosphere of pervasive surveillance or intimidation.
New technologies are giving employers unprecedented abilities to monitor and watch their workers. Employers have a legitimate interest in monitoring work to ensure efficiency and productivity, but electronic surveillance often goes well beyond proper management concerns and becomes a tool for spying on employees in furtherance of no legitimate business interest. In some cases, employers have even demanded that workers turn over the passwords to their social media accounts.
The ACLU is working to ensure that workplace monitoring is narrowly tailored in time, place, and manner, that employers inform workers of all monitoring, and that even permitted intrusions are not used in a way that creates an atmosphere of pervasive surveillance or intimidation.