Conclusion

At the beginning of this chapter, I stated three main aims that I hoped to achieve: to show that providing purely legal answers to an ethical question is an inadequate approach to the problem of privacy on the Internet; to discuss what privacy in the medium of the Internet actually is; and to apply a globally acceptable ethical approach to the issue of employer monitoring of employee e-mail and Web usage, and thus to answer the question of what is and is not morally permissible in this area. In applying the standards of the International Bill of Human Rights, I have shown that the practice of employer monitoring of employees e-mail and Web usage is an infringement of the employees rights to privacy and can only be justified under very specific circumstances, circumstances that in practice will rarely arise. While monitoring the e-mail and Web usage of employees is certainly something that employers can do, it is also certainly not something that they ought to do. ^{[ 7]}

^{[ 7]} My thanks to John Weckert for inviting me to include this chapter within this collection. I would also like to thank those who have given helpful comments on previous versions of this chapter, especially Nikki Coleman, John Weckert, and attendees of the seminar that I presented at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.