Monitoring employees: paranoid psychosis and business

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Employees of large companies have come to solve it: a single of their actions now immune to the wary eye of their superiors. Intrusive methods of control, which have increased with the development of new technologies, leaving less and less space to the private sphere. In practice, the content of e-mails sent or received with enterprise hardware (desktops and laptops, Blackberries, mobile phones, etc..) Can be easily viewed by their department. The same service will also learn and record which sites were consulted, and when, without having to add special device in the computer of the user. Most employees now know that this kind of draconian control is possible, but how is it really practiced by the companies?

A study by Forrester Consulting, 44% of large U.S. companies employ people whose mission is to monitor outbound email content business of the company, 48% say they make regular audits of the contents of messages. Justification? The fear that employees deliver sensitive information, a trade secret or data relating to intellectual property.

Obviously, there are side effects. Barriers to autonomy and freedom of action of employees easily exceed the limits of the trader, such as when a company equips its vehicles with GPS plotter so you can find 24 hours 24. And, of course, when it comes to monitor sites visited and e-mail messages without the knowledge of employees, in violation of respect for privacy.

In fact, many employers seem to mock the elementary rules of proportionality in monitoring. Such flicage Is provided illegal? "Companies can take advantage of legislation uncertain answers Bertil Cottier, a law professor of communication at the University of Italian Switzerland. Because the existing legal basis simply to define principles extremely general. The Federal Law on Data Protection (DPA), which governs the collection of information is very difficult to implement correctly. In addition, the federal commissioner for data protection has the sole authority to provide recommendations. To complain of abuse, we must go through a judge who, in most cases, not an understanding of these issues. "

The legal uncertainty is very bad in this area. "I often find with surprise that companies, even medium-sized or large, have no regulations regarding data protection observed in this regard Gilles Monnier, lawyer and professor at the Faculty of Law and Criminal Lausanne. Yet companies are required to organize themselves to achieve in practice the protection of personal data. Also noteworthy, in particular as regards industry, the ongoing monitoring of employee activity is prohibited under art. 26 of the Ordinance 3 of the Labour Act. "

Chair in Telecommunications and Safety at HEC Lausanne, Helie, Solange Ghernaouti provides a brief overview: "We must first note that the Internet, with its full range of tools for linking to anyone with anyone, anywhere, anytime, abolished not only the temporal and geographic boundaries but also those between work and private life, between working life and world of entertainment. This is a phenomenon whose consequences have not been taken into account and that there seems to discover potential problems with user-generated social networks. "

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