SCN: "High-Tech Snooping All in Day's Work"

[Doug Schuler]

"High-Tech Snooping All in Day's Work"
Los Angeles Times (10/29/00) P. A1; Miller, Greg 

Many major companies are taking workplace surveillance to the next
level by using computer forensics experts and software to uncover
everything an employee has done on a workplace PC. Employers argue that
the tools help them catch workers who use their office PCs for
nefarious activities such as stealing sensitive company data and
downloading pornography. Meanwhile, privacy experts worry that computer
forensics will help companies pry into their workers' private lives.
Computer forensics investigators, who replicate and scrutinize
everything on a user's hard drive, admit that these searches often
reveal information about workers' marital difficulties, health
problems, and financial troubles. New programs such as Guidance
Software's Encase are making it easier for forensics experts to quickly
find incriminating material on hard drives. Encase copies a hard drive
without any alterations and restores deleted files. The software then
searches for illicit material and generates a report of its findings.
Encase initially drew most of its business from law enforcement
agencies, but private sector companies have increasingly embraced the
software over the past year. Although privacy advocates object to
monitoring employees in the workplace, companies have a nearly
unrestricted right to do so.  Monitoring now takes place at 45 percent
of major U.S. companies, compared to 35 percent two years ago.
Microsoft, Boeing, and Disney are among those using powerful computer
forensics tools that were originally designed for law enforcement.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20001029/t000103426.html 

For information regarding ACM's activities on behalf of privacy matters, 
visit http://www.acm.org/usacm/privacy.

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