This article discusses as to how new technology has made monitoring employees by employers possible. It looks at how privacy laws in the Western countries, especially in the US, have attempted to balance two basic interests. Employers' interests in minimizing losses and injuries, and maximizing production; and employees' interests in being free from intrusion into their private affairs. The author also lists in depth, the four types of claims that employees can have against employers in cases of privacy abuse: Intrusion; workplace searches; electronic monitoring; and surveillance. It concludes that both parties have to try to understand the other's point of view, to enable better relations to surface.

Today, new technologies make it possible for employers to monitor many aspects of their employees' jobs, particularly on telephones, computer terminals and through electronic and voice-mail. In a recent survey of 301 businesses by Macworld magazine in the US, about 22% of the businesses have researched employee computer files, voice-mail, e-mail, or other networking communication (Johnson, 1997). However, there is an increasing amount of attention being paid to a body of law protecting an employee's "right of privacy" in recent years. Unlike the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable government searches and seizures, common law of privacy rights provide a remedy for the acts of private persons. In addition, the federal government and some states have supplemented the developing judicially created right of privacy with statutory restrictions.

Generally speaking, privacy law has attempted to balance two basic interests as it has developed over the years: The employers' interests in minimizing losses and injuries, and in maximizing production; and the employees' interest in being free from intrusion into their private affairs. Nevertheless, there is no agreement to decide on which of the interests is over the other, and the law makes different accommodations depending upon the circumstances involved. Moreover, employers who are thinking of adopting aggressive measures to get information about employees' or applicants' on-duty or off-duty conduct should consider the restrictions arising from both judicially created and statutory law (Shaw, 1997).

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