The Tyranny of Employee Surveillance

America was founded as a battle against British tyranny. Might Americans forge some political consensus today by uniting in opposition against contemporary forms of tyranny?

Take for example modern human resource management. Years ago businesses implemented means to measure how much time employees spent looking at work-related sites on their computers and how often they were looking at other things. Increasingly work computers block the ability to look at other things (and people use their phones for non-work related browsing anyway--but better beware when doing so on your employer's WiFi network). Techniques are now being developed to measure how much engagement during the workday employees' eyeballs have with their computer screens. Computer keystrokes are already measured. Employees wear badges that keep track of whom they speak to at work (and how often they speak at meetings, and even their tone of voice). At least one company now sells chips the size of grains of rice to implant in the bodies of employees. All in the name of worker efficiency and productivity. Anybody but me think this kind of workplace surveillance is tyrannical, too Brave New World?

This issue doesn't strike me as partisan--employees who identify with Tea Party Republicans are as likely to be disturbed by the liberty issues associated with such surveillance as Progressive Democrats are to be disturbed with its illiberalness. (Search "workplace surveillance" or "employee surveillance practices" if you are interested in learning more.)

I wouldn't advocate for outlawing such surveillance techniques, but I sure think laws requiring all applicants for jobs to be informed about the prospective employer's use of such techniques is a good idea, as is annual notification to all employees of the employer's current surveillance practices. (The New South Wales, Australia Workplace Surveillance Act of 2005 requires this.) And I don't mean notification in legalistic language buried in an Acceptable Use Policy statement. I mean in language detailing in ‎plain English the surveillance techniques being used by the employer.

With such knowledge, maybe a lot of the best employees would choose to work for employers who keep employee surveillance to a minimum, in which case the market will take care of much of the problem. It frightens me to think that perhaps Americans are becoming complacent about such things, like the proverbial frog on the boil. If we don't push back against these practices, where will this end?