1- Script of Recording

Now Bosses Can Spy on E?Mail – but Should They?
By Lisa Guernsey

The International Herald Tribune, April 6, 2000

NEW YORK—Andrew Quinn, a systems manager for a toy company near Montreal, is starting to learn more about his fellow employees than he had ever wanted to know. He has found that one co?worker has a penchant for herbal remedies, another likes jokes about women drivers and another checks the lottery numbers each morning. He knows these things because, about a month ago, Mr. Quinn installed a new piece of software on the computer network that enables him to monitor not only every Web site that his employees browse, but every e?mail message that they send or receive. Those details, he said, help him figure out exactly what is straining his e?mail server, which has been crashing at least once a week. To office workers elsewhere, Mr. Quinn's surveillance might sound like Big Brother in action. But if they think it is of no immediate concern to them, they should think again. Ritvik Toys is one of hundreds of companies that are looking at workers' correspondence on a routine basis. And the number of companies doing so is soaring.
Company managers give a variety reasons for installing such software. Some like Mr. Quinn, are on the lookout for oversize e?mail attachments that clog their networks. Others seek to dissuade employees from using their systems for personal activities. Others want to make sure employees are not sending harassing e?mail messages that could cause trouble for the company.
Whatever the reason, the snooping raises ethical questions. Should managers really be peeking into people's private lives like this? And what should they do with sensitive information that, if disclosed, could jeopardize an employee's career?
Until recently, electronic monitoring applied mostly to Web browsing. It was easy for managers to look through logs of Web sites visited by employees. Few managers bothered. But in the past six months, software has become more advanced, enabling companies automatically to record, filter and sort every word that streams through their networks. Once monitoring becomes routine, it also falls into grayer areas of the law, ?according to some lawyers familiar with workplace privacy issues. A few lawyers have argued that a casual e?mail exchange is more like a phone conversation than a printed memo and should be protected in the same way that wiretap laws prohibit government agencies from secretly listening to personal conversations.
"Would you entrust the government with this kind of information?" asked Jeremy Gruber legal director for the National Workrights Institute at a recent New York Bar Association discussion on electronic privacy. "Why do we think that employers will use it in a wonderful way?"

Essay Question :
What would you say is at stake when employers and government monitor employees or citizens too closely ?

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Now Bosses Can Spy on E?Mail – but Should They?

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Now Bosses Can Spy on E?Mail – but Should They?