Introduction

Electronic monitoring and workplace surveillance are topics of interest to scholars in a wide variety of disciplines ranging from the fundamental, such as sociology and philosophy over the specialised computer and information ethics, to the applied topics, such as information systems. Recent technological developments, particularly the increasing ubiquity of computers and networks, as well as the convergence between different technologies, have created a whole new range of ways in which we can try to find out what others are doing. The area in which these activities are probably most prominent and widespread is that of the workplace. Employers have an interest in what their employees are doing for a variety of reasons ranging from ensuring that employees are spending their paid time productively to fears of becoming legally liable for inappropriate online behaviour.

As one can see, the area is complex and allows a variety of approaches. Electronic workplace monitoring can be seen as a legal problem, a moral question, a social conundrum , and many more. Accordingly, one can find numerous publications that address the problem from different angles, offering conceptual clarification , empirical data, or both. One thing that most of these publications have in common is that they start with the assumption that monitoring is in some sense problematic , and then they attempt to offer some sort of solution or clarification. The authors of this chapter are all involved in this sort of research regarding the ethical or social side of monitoring. And during the research, we encountered something that puzzled us and motivated us to write this chapter. During our empirical investigations into electronic monitoring, we found that a very widespread initial reaction of many of our respondents who were monitored in one way or another was that they did not see it as a problem. The dilemma at the bottom of this chapter is thus that despite the fact that monitoring is generally recognised by academics as being problematic, the people who are faced with it do not, as a general rule, share this perception.

This chapter will therefore attempt a different approach to what is classically done in academic writings about surveillance. Typically, articles on surveillance will give an overview of the literature, identify a problem in the existing literature, and offer some kind of empirical or conceptual tool to address this. This chapter will instead start out with a description of three different pieces of research that we did and whose common feature was that the research objects failed to see monitoring as problematic. On the basis of these empirical findings, we will then proceed to ask the question why academics see it as a problem, while the people who are most affected by it do not. This raises a number of issues, including the relationship of theory and practice and the role of universities and academics in society or the ethical foundations of privacy and surveillance, which will be impossible to discuss comprehensively in a brief chapter. Nevertheless, we believe this discussion to be of central importance for people interested in surveillance. Without clarifying to some degree why it is possible to see surveillance as problematic, despite a lack of public interest, all attempts to effectively change the practice are in danger of not being taken seriously. In this chapter we hope to start a debate on why people frequently think that being surveilled is no problem and what, if anything, academics can and should do about it.