Monitoring and Privacy: Is Your Head Still In the Sand?

We give out personal information every day. Between our birth and death records, we dispense an avalanche of information to the government, businesses and other organizations in return for employment or services. For example, we provide detailed information to schools, banks, state departments of motor vehicles, health providers and insurers, and in return we receive an education, bank accounts, a driver's license and health care. We also establish relationships and accounts with vendors and service providers in exchange for discounts and promotions. Businesses thrive on having such customer information.

In turn, we are observed and monitored every day. Only the high cost of persistent, systematic surveillance systems prohibits their widespread use in public places today. And without the aid of machines, the observers quickly forget what they saw and rarely collect and correlate data for later use. In the future, security checks like the one at Super Bowl XXXV -- in which hidden cameras scanned the faces of arriving spectators and compared their portraits with photos of alleged criminals -- may be commonplace.

When the setting changes from the public to the private-sector workplace, however, monitoring takes on a different significance. Enterprises can and often should monitor their employees in the ordinary course of business.

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