Blog assignment 1

There are those who say that if you have nothing to hide why be afraid of the approaching “big brother society”. Perhaps they are right; employers pay a lot of money for the employees, so of course they want to get something back. And if they can’t trust them doing what they should and what they are paid to do, what alternatives do they have than to monitor them?

The article "snooping bosses" gives a lot of numbers that at least made me raise an eye brow; 76% of employers watch you surf the Web and 36% track content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard, 38% hire staff to sift through your e-mail. As I read this my fist thoughts where, how much does this surveillance cost? And is it worth it?
If I where monitored all day at my work and every keystroke was recorded, would I work harder? Would I earn the company more money? I am not sure that I would. I think that the lack of trust in the employees actually can damage their motivation, make them less productive in the end.

Still, the surveillance has its benefits. Because we spend many hours at work, as the article said, we do a lot of surfing the internet and with these surveillance programs, illegal actions like child pornography can be found and prosecuted. Perhaps this is a reason good enough to let the employers continue with there surveillance.

“It starts with a silver spoon...”* when courts regularly permit all kinds of surveillance and monitoring of employees where will it stop? If they can monitor you at work and insert an ID card in your arm, then when all the equipment are there why not track all your whereabouts, all your purchases, all the calls you make, your hart rhythm, brain waves, why stop with monitoring just the employees why not monitoring there wife and husbands as well because he or she has a big influence on the employee... Even if you have nothing to hide, don’t we all want to have our privacy and be trusted? I think we do and I think that is part of being human.

*A Swedish saying that thievery starts with a silver spoon, indicating that then there is no return.