Beware the 007 in your company
Posted on November 29, 2007
Filed Under Cold hard career facts, Career Development
Most of us know that when we are at work, any activity we do, whether on a company computer or just on company time is subject to surveillance by our employer. So when I heard about Boeing spying on their employees I figured it was a case of employees surfing inappropriate websites or something to that effect.
But when I read that ‘a Boeing investigator told a Puget Sound-area employee that he was followed off company property to a lunch spot, that investigators had footage of him “coming and going” and that investigators had accessed his personal Gmail account’, to me that seemed a bit too Orwellian.
The challenge doesn’t seem to be workplace behavior, but rather activities that occur during off hours. I’m a big believer that what I do on my own time is my business. What bars I frequent, restaurants I go to, or movies I see should be my business and no one else’s. I don’t have any big secrets sitting in my gmail account, but if I did, I’d like to think that there’s a law against anyone hacking in and reading about my latest order from amazon.com. Of course I’ve spent most of my career in the liberal software space where my extra curricular life usually pales in comparison to some co-workers I’ve encountered. So for me this has always been a non-issue.
But back to Boeing, I get that they have trade secrets that are worth millions if not hundreds of millions, but spying on employees while they’re not at work or worse yet accessing their private email, to me is way over the line.
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