subject: Personal Privacy Versus Corporate Accountability [print this page] Now more than ever the fate of a corporation can hang on the behavior of its employees. At the same time, personal privacy is an increasingly hot issue as the digital age threatens to make secrets as obsolete as a transistor radio. With the rising costs of corporate wrongdoing on one hand and the increasing effectiveness of e-discovery software on the other, it will be interesting to see how well personal privacy stands up.
We would all like to live in a perfect world. Companies would treat employees fairly and would give every client or customer a fair deal. Employees would respect the position and property of the company they worked for. They wouldn't abuse the trust of a client or steal from their employer. We would be able to trust each other, and the ethical standards set by companies would be absolutes.
That world doesn't exist, even on TV. The world we live in is imperfect. Companies routinely gouge customers and try to compensate employees beneath their value. Employees use the company to legitimize all kinds of abuses, ranging from ripping off customers to misusing company resources to outright theft.
Because we live in an imperfect world, the ethical standards of companies are constantly under assault, both by employees and by the other ambitions of the company itself. Within the corporate structure, there is almost always an oversight division, which has two primary tasks: prevent abuses from happening and, if that fails, deal with them quickly to minimize the damage.
With more and more business being done on computers, and with more of the computing being done by servers instead of individual employees' computers, corporate oversight has the ability to be much more comprehensive. It has data at its disposal - employees' e-mails, logs of what files they access, and histories of Web pages they visit. Because the information is on a server, it can study that information in a variety of ways to prevent problems from happening.
This presents a conundrum. It is in the company's best interests to spot problems quickly. It is in employees' best interests for the company to remain healthy. But since most companies allow their employees - especially salaried ones - to do some personal Web surfing on company time, the information available on the server isn't just company information. It can include personal information, too, such as e-mails from a personal account or an online banking login.
Where does one draw the line between corporate governance and an invasion of privacy? Employees planning to commit fraud may leave evidence on personal e-mail that they wouldn't put on company e-mail. Is it all right to search all employees' personal e-mails? An employee with financial problems might be more likely to do something illegal. Does that make it all right to spy on employees' bank accounts?
For the most part, companies have avoided invasions of privacy, even when that means that they lose money in penalties and investigation costs. But as the costs of investigation after the fact rise, and as more companies have solutions like e-discovery software on their servers already, will they become more aggressive about stopping problems before they develop? Odds are that personal privacy will become less of a concern after a company gets burned and self-preservation takes over.
