There is no consent when it comes to the employer/employee power imbalance. Agree or be fired is coersion.
The Data Protection Act does allow for monitoring without consent, but only where that monitoring is specific and limited to an absolutely necessary purpose that overrides the rights of the data subject: for example, the detection and prevention of crime, the protection of life or limb, or the fulfilment of a legal obligation. For any other purpose, consent must be given; for that consent to be valid, it must be fully informed, freely given and freely revocable. Where consent is relied upon as the basis for data processing, the burden of proof is upon the data processor to demonstrate that the consent was legitimately given.
That's assuming the employee is even aware that they're being monitored in the first place.
It will become a standard cause in employment contracts that people will be "free" to negotiate, just like everyone "negotiates" their employment contracts now.
I have no responsibility outside my job duties. The company goes folds? Goes into massive debt? I do not lose sleep or stress in the slightest.
There is no power imbalance in my mind. There is no whip or debt to the company to pay off.
Acquiring this mindset took one bad boss when they altered our agreement and I quit that moment without looking back. I had no job lined up yet knew my skills were valuable.
I mean, that's great for you. But for millions of people, their health and wellness is directly tied into making money this very month (and possibly getting health insurance for them and/or their family), and losing their employer because they fuck up directly interfere with that, and will make their life a living hell until they can find a new job, which isn't always easy with the various constraints people have in their life.
Life is wide, really really wide, and it's a shitty experience for large swaths of the population.
It’s like expecting the phone company not to log every key press on the pay telephone boxes they have set up.
I assume everything my work computer can monitor is being monitored. If I want privacy, I use a personal device.
The outrage seems to mostly be about computer system monitoring but it’s bizarre to me as I’ve also always assumed all my computer activity at an employer device is 100% monitored. Why would it not be? especially this has always been done for security reasons.
There have been numerous tests and offices and computers have been noted to not have an expectation of privacy, even keyloggers.
Id like to see a case where people take their work laptop into the toilet and employers record business and see how the courts decide that.
And mainly, as an employer I need all the info on your computer, it’s valuable. And there’s not a way to filter out what’s weard_beard’s family messaging them vs work stuff. So I just keep it all.
Of course I don’t do that because I don’t employ people, but that seems rational if I did.
So what I do, individually, is I have a phone. It belongs to me. If I want to check my bank balance, I use my phone. If I want to receive messages about my family’s health, I get them on my phone.
Even if my employer promised never to monitor my work computer, and they kept their promise, I wouldn’t want my kids’ school messaging me on my work email or my work phone.
No one needs to check their bank balance on their work computer to be happy and productive. Nor do they need to get texts from friends and family on their work phone.
But everyone needs money. And everyone needs bathroom breaks.
For me, it’s about reasonable vs unreasonable.
I think it would be odd if an employer actually banned bank web sites. But it would also be odd if an employee didn’t want their computer logged in the off chance they checked their bank balance. Or wanted the employer to buy some method of not storing personal data while storing business data.
I mean, my employer is regulated and must store all documents, email, and web traffic I send or receive. I wouldn’t expect them to try to distinguish what’s personal and not store it. Is that even possible?
Laws are reflections of attitudes. People in the US believe that they have limited right to privacy at work and so laws are written to reflect that belief. People in the UK don’t buy into that theory and so laws are written that are more nuanced. The first step to gain rights is to believe in them.
No one tell this guy about the shit home owners have to deal with. Once you decide to give other people access to anything you own you are held to a completely different set of standards than for things you keep locked in your closet at home.
in countries that have strong protection for renters, the owner does not even have the right to enter the property without express permission from the persons living there and any kind of surveillance is out of the question.
People who rent a home are legally entitled to privacy and the home owner can’t put cameras up and monitor them unless the resident permits it.
But if I own a home and live there I can put cameras up wherever I want. And if you come into my home, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy standing on my front porch. But if it’s different if you’re in the bathroom of my home because you expect privacy there.
Of course “reasonable” varies and states vary. But, in the US, the courts have ruled that at work you should pretty much zero expectation of privacy except in a few exceptions like bathrooms and lactation rooms and clinics and stuff.
[0] https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w...
Device ownership can change what's considered a legitimate interest. For example if you set up a pay telephone box you can implement monitoring of keypresses to prevent fraud. But you can't just record whatever you want without justification, and you can only store the data as long as your justification requires and use it only for that purpose. Everything above that requires consent.
So if the existence of an imbalance implies non-consent/coercion, can there ever be consent?