Video Surveillance
Video surveillance is utilized by many people in the United States today. Regular people use them to keep a watchful eye over their property; if they leave for work or go on an extended vacation they will flip it on to get evidence of any attempted break ins. The police are the main proprietors of these security cameras though, as they use them in pretty much everything they do; they are mounted to the front of every police car and kept rolling all of the time so the crook (or the cop!) can’t get away with any funny business. Businesses also employ these cameras services quite regularly. They might do so for security reasons, such as mounting one outside of their office building to try and catch any crooks on video who might be breaking into their building. They could also do it for a more controversial reason; watching the employees. Many businesses use these cameras to monitor unknowing employees, and make sure they aren’t doing anything illicit.
There are two sides to this argument; one says yes to the cameras, and one says no. The side supporting the video surveillance says that the threat of cameras watching employees will stop them from doing anything the company would not support. Also, it takes out the risk of trusting an employee with too sensitive of a task. The other side says that this trust is exactly what makes an employee loyal; if they are being watched all of the time, they won’t feel trustworthy themselves. Also, it just isn’t right to perform monitoring of someone without them knowing, and you know the employees wouldn’t know.
There was a court case recently that explored this issue. Two young woman who worked in a company building to help reestablish orphans and underprivileged kids lives back together shared a cubicle in their office space. The two woman one day discovered a video camera in their office, and complained to the manager, who did nothing. They then went to court, and after a long deliberation, it turns out the cameras were only on after the pair left work. Upon this point, the women lost the case.
This begs the question; who was right? It could go both ways; one could say the girls were right because, in their testimonies, they were often there after work and even claimed to changing for the gym in the office. The employer isn’t completely at fault here though, for he just wanted to protect his computers, and make sure nobody was breaking in at night. Obviously the girls lost the case, so surveillance won out.
When dealing with online surveillance though, the answer is always no; often times it is a hacker doing the watching too. To avoid these problems, try using an anonymous proxy server to encrypt and encode all of your transmissions. A private proxy server will also ensure anonymous browsing on the Internet as well, so that hacker can’t perform any surveillance on your browsing.
