Faculty members at Harvard University were shocked to discover that university administrators monitored their e-mail accounts recently to uncover the source of a media leak about a school cheating scandal. But should they have been?

The monitoring debate

Thomas Claburn, editor-at-large for InformationWeek, isn’t so sure. As he writes in a new online feature story, employees of any institution – whether a public university or a private company – shouldn’t expect privacy today. And they really shouldn’t expect this if they work on computers or use e-mail accounts provided by their employers.

High-tech snooping?

But Claburn wrote that it’s naïve to be surprised by this kind of surveillance. Employees, he said, should be expecting their bosses to monitor their computer behavior, particularly when these employees are working on company-provided equipment.

The end of privacy?

The opinions from the experts quoted by Claburn are a mixed bag. These experts say that some monitoring of employees is reasonable, but other techniques are not. For instance, employers shouldn’t monitor their workers’ locations when these workers are off duty. Perhaps the most sage advice in the story? Those companies who trust their employees tend to be rewarded with workers who are harder-working and much more loyal.