> July 10, 2000
>
> ATLANTA (CNN) -- A growing number of employers are using computer
> software to secretly determine which of their employees may be wasting
> company time using their computers to visit inappropriate Web sites and
> to send unauthorized e-mail.
>
> Last year, Xerox Corporation fired 40 employees for what it said was
> inappropriate use of the Internet at work, and The New York Times fired
> 23 workers on grounds of sending potentially offensive e-mail on company
> computers.
>
> "We live in a world of cubicles, closed office paces," said Roy Young of
> Adavi Inc., maker of Silent Watch surveillance software. "It's difficult
> for managers to monitor what employees are doing. "Silent Watch gives
> managers a tool to monitor employee activity without having to leave
> their desk."
>
> Every keystroke recorded. Young's stealthy software allows an employer
> to monitor dozens of computers from a single screen in real time, while
> recording every keystroke an employee makes, even if the data are
> deleted.
>
> A recent survey by the American Management Association finds 54 percent
> of companies said they monitored their employees' Internet connections,
> while 38 percent said they reviewed worker e-mail messages.
>
> Employer Scott Lebowitz, president of a large pet store and mail-order
> business in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, installed computer surveillance
> software after suspicions arose about how his employees were spending
> their work hours.
>
> "I'd walk into their office and they would switch off to something else
> and that really made me wonder, what are they doing?" said Lebowitz.
>
> After installing the new software, Lebowitz said he discovered two
> workers had been spending between 50 and 70 percent of their entire days
> on Web sites that were not work related.
>
> Lebowitz confronted the two employees with the data and fired them.
>
> But the increasing use of sophisticated tools used for worker
> surveillance prompts many legal questions about privacy. Law professor
> Jeffrey Rosen has just written a book titled "The Unwanted Gaze: The
> Destruction of Privacy in America." "As citizens are beginning to
> realize just what it's like to live in a world where every single
> keystroke is being watched and tracked, I think it's making many people
> uncomfortable indeed," Rosen said.