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     workplace

This page considers workplace privacy in Australia, in particular covert and overt electronic surveillance of employees.

It covers -

• introduction
• evolution
• employee issues
• legislation
• studies

     introduction

As preceding pages have indicated, legal recognition of workplace privacy rights in Australia has evolved over the past century. It has gathered pace as businesses, government agencies and other organisations have moved to adopt closed circuit video surveillance, email monitoring and geospatial tracking of employees/agents.

There is no common law action for breach of privacy and there is uncertainty regarding whether federal telecommunications interception laws prohibits email monitoring by an individual's employer.

The federal privacy regime is weakened through substantial exemptions for 'employee records' (and for 'small businesses') and thus provides limited protection to employees.

It is also bounded by contract law, with consumers and visitors to entertainment venues for example typically agreeing to terms such as bag searches as a condition of entry to the premises.

     evolution

Concerns regarding workplace privacy have centred on covert surveillance, ie monitoring of communication or activity without agreement by an employee or customer.

In the past employers deployed a range of mechanisms to address fraud, embezzlement and other crime by employees (including use of mirrors and cameras in changerooms or security staff hidden in airconditioning ducts or on ladders outside staff facilities) or to identify trade union and political activity (eg surreptitious inspection of desk drawers, personal bags or lockers.

The more enlightened indicated that telephone conversations in the workplace - or telegraphic traffic - might be surveilled. Others simply monitored calls without an explicit statement. Some alerted staff that outgoing mail might be examined; the extent to which employers opened incoming 'personal' mail is unclear. Some conducted inspections of desks and lockers on an ad hoc basis; others examined more systematically (although generally surreptitiously, given expressions of concern by individuals and unions).

Disquiet in recent years has encompassed -

• camera surveillance - using closed-circuit television or other imaging equipment for real-time and/or recorded monitoring of employees and customers
• computer surveillance - use of network management software, keyloggers and other hardware/software to identify an individual's use of IT equipment (including tracking visits to websites, downloading/sending music and other content, viewing email and checking keyboard activity for performance norms)
• geospatial surveillance - electronically tracking of the location or movement of employees through for example GIS devices in vehicles or tags worn by employees within a building or campus

Disquiet has also encompassed unauthorised use/distribution of information that may have been legitimately collected (for example employees supplying media organisations - or their mates and anyone with access to an 'expose' site - with prurient photographs and video taken in lifts and retail changerooms).