surveillance to enhance security

surveillance to enhance security

The increased in insecurity arising from both hard and white-collar crime, necessitates the increase in surveillance as a mitigation measure. The rise in technology is a factor that promotes monitoring, which is a trendy development not just in the workplace, but also at the household level. People are installing CCTV cameras and other surveillance tools in their homes to record the happenings. With these technologies, comes to the assurance of observing events and making the necessary adjustments as far as safety and security are concerned. Living in this error of cyber technology causes people to applaud and fear its consequences at the same time. The fear revolves around the existence of some techniques that interfered with the right to privacy. However, some see the same technology as a problem, considering the idea that people have a right to privacy. Perhaps, the question worth posing should concern the extent to which privacy is a necessity at the workplace. Ideally, many Christians would not care much about privacy, but that can change if immoral acts are arising from surveillance. The oversight role of God is seen in the Book of Genesis, where He installs himself as the creator and controller of humans. Surveillance, should, thus, be used to enhance the oversight role of managers.

While the use of surveillance to enhance security is a move worth acknowledging, many ethical issues continue to dominate the organizations’ environment, with people fearing that employers and governments are now misusing the technologies. For example, having software that accesses the computes and social media accounts of employees is a violation of the right to privacy. The case of privacy does not only lean towards the employers, but there are instances where organizations have been victims of the employees, who use electronic tools to access information or to mount surveillance. There is a thin line between the benefits of surveillance technologies and their drawbacks in organizations. Most of the drawbacks revolve around the legalities of these tools when it comes to privacy. Christians value others, meaning that they cannot support activities that expose people to risks. The purpose of this paper is to examine the surveillance, with an emphasis on the issues of privacy that arise from it.

The Essence of Surveillance in Business Settings

Improvements in information and communication technologies, accompanied innovation in security, offers organizational managers an opportunity to enhance security. Unlike in the past, where employers lived in the dark, employers can monitor, track, and analyze activities in the digital and physical spaces. The advances in video technology, enables managers to install surveillance tools such as CCTV cameras, which can help them to monitor the flow of work. The existence of wireless recording, sensors, and other platforms for advanced analytics is an advantage to employers as far as staying in control of the employees comes into the play. There is nothing as comforting as the ability of a manager to see what is happening in the entire organization while seated behind a computer screen. Such an assurance, culminates in calmness, with managers having nothing much to worry about regarding workflow. They can use the surveillance information to institute changes, in turn, smoothening operations to gain a higher turnover.

The interest of corporations in surveillance has been growing. Lestoc (2019) examines a survey of increased adoption of surveillance among corporations. The survey was conducted by Gartner News and established that 22% of corporations globally and in various industries are now using worker-movement data. The study further revealed that 17% of corporations worldwide had installed tools to monitor work-computer usage data, with approximately 16% using calendar-usage data or Microsoft Outlook. The implication is that organizations are concerned with security data and using surveillance to improve operations (Lestoc, 2019). An extrapolation of these findings is that interest in surveillance technologies among corporations will keep growing, even as the developers of these technologies pinpoint their strategic significance in the contemporary management environment.

Surveillance tools are not merely meant to benefit employers, but they can be used to promote employee security. The dynamics of the workplace environment culminates in issues of insecurity, ranging from theft to harassment, and laxity, which makes the climate insecure for the workers. There is nothing as exciting as knowing that all the items in the workplace safe from buglers or thieves. It gives the employees more time to concentrate on work. Similarly, issues of harassment at the workplace can reduce significantly due to the use of surveillance tools and technologies. The presence of surveillance tools in an organization helps to suppress vices, such as sexual harassment and other forces of abuses, including assault and verbal abuse. Still, such occurrences might happen. Well, the good thing is that it easy to serve justice, considering that the surveillance tools are used to generate information to be used as evidence in criminal proceedings. Time for the employers and other workers to run-away with workplace crime might as well be over if the entire practice of workplace surveillance is objectified.

There is no doubt that surveillance and monitoring scale up operations in business organizations. This informs the growing trend in the adoption of surveillance tools by organizations. Established firms are investing heavily in the state of the art surveillance technologies, such as audio recording, cloud-based monitoring, and closed-circuit television. Hypothetically, the presence of these technologies at these technologies in a particular work-setting enhances productivity. Some of the technologies are not meant to monitor the employees, but to examine operations in entirety, especially in manufacturing organizations where there is a vast amount of mechanical operations. The surveillance tools can be used to monitor the mechanized processes, intending to determine the functionality of machines and the resulting needs for improvement thereof. Back on the question of privacy, it is essential to note that the employees will have concerns and questions regarding privacy, primarily when an organization is investing highly in surveillance tools.

The Ethics of Workplace Surveillance

Allen, Coopman, Hart, and Walker (2007) examines that the need for privacy dominates the workplace, especially in the wake of the claims that some organizations monitor employees electronically. The availability of surveillance technologies means that they are at the disposal of any players in the realms of business. Evidence suggests that the manufacturing and selling of surveillance tools and equipment is a booming business. According to Mudd (2008), the business gained grounds at the beginning of the 20th century, with both firms and individuals preferring to buy spy equipment discreetly. The first ethical question revolves around the disclosure that goes into the purchasing of the surveillance tools. The regulations of surveillance activities require buyers to provide information regarding the intended use of these tools. Secret purchases in the black market imply ill intensions (Mudd, 2008).

Technology dominates all spheres of life, including the workplace, where people use electronic devices that can be used to gather and store information. Technology is undoubtedly beneficial, considering that it induces efficiency in the workplace. Internet and email have been helpful to organizations by enhancing communication. It is easier to run business operations in the broader environment due to the existence of technologies that facilitate communication and networking. However, many ethical issues are emerging from the use of surveillance by employees. Some employers do not disclose the purpose of monitoring, which exposes individual data act activities.

Balancing Surveillance and Workplace Privacy

Everyone needs an assurance that a given workplace is safe, a factor that makes surveillance one of the necessities of organizational management. However, the utilization of surveillance tools in organizations comes with a burden of responsibility in the sense that they can infringe on the privacy of the individual members of the organization (Allen, Coopman, Hart, and Walker, 2007). Privacy is a thorny issue when it comes to matters of national security, as evident in the United States v. Brooks case. The case centers on the rights of the government to monitor people as a way of promoting security. The Fourth Amendment is the pillar for refuting the use of surveillance in the realms of policing, yet, the issues confuses even the jurists, particularly when examining the balance between individual privacy and security (the United States v. Brooks,” 2013). The case indicates the complications that surround surveillance as a practice in the confines of security. Issue of privacy and surveillance extend to the spheres of business, where managers prefer these technologies in enhancing operations.

Most surveillance activities in organizations do not intend to interfere with the privacy of the employees; however, there are chances of misuse of these technologies. Cyber laws have been developed at the federal and state level. The essence of these laws is to give discretion to organizations on the boundaries of surveillance programs (Lestoc, 2019). Lestoc further noted the observations in Business News Daily, revealing that there are scenarios where organizations do not necessarily need to inform the employees that they are being watched. Specific state and local laws cover this provision. In other terms, the objectivity of surveillance is only met when people in a work setting are not aware of a monitoring program. However, some regulations require a complete discretion regarding the existence of surveillance programs in an organization, meaning that the organization should inform the employees that they are being monitored, failure of which the employees can sue them for infringing on their privacy as provided for in the supreme laws.

The prevalence of laws to guide the application of surveillance programs in organizations implies that the employees have nothing to fear when using organizations’ electronic tools, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops, among other devices. Still, there is a need to bridle monitoring, especially in cases where organizations use it subjectively. Lestoc (2019) observes that managers have a right to know what the employees are doing within and outside the organization as that has the potential to promote or hinder organizational operations. Arguably, some employees can take advantage of corporate resources, resulting in the misuse of information and other valuable assets of an organization. Such employees can be liabilities in the long-term, rendering monitoring a worthwhile move. In such a case, the organization may have a right to monitor the activities of the employees. However, this has to be done within the limits of the law, which means that consent is key to preventing organizations from a possible breach of employees’ privacy in the name of applying surveillance (Lestoc, 2019).

Data Capitalism and Digital Promotions as Avenues for Privacy Infringement

The emergence of online communities based on online technologies makes it easy for firms to monitor customers and to use the traces of data that they leave behind devoid of their consent. West (2019) examines surveillance and privacy from the dimension of data capitalism. The study focuses on the implications of data capitalism on individual privacy, primarily in the wake of commercial surveillance and the dotcom bubble. The search for a new model essential for running online commerce has caused companies to leverage on the data of users to fulfill advertising objectives. The vibrancy of the online communities causes people to leave traces of information, which companies collect and use for marketing purposes. Online commercial activities have been on the rise, resulting in a subsequent increase in the need for customer data. There are some concerns about the means through which companies collect customer data (West, 2019). Fundamentally, it is hard to stop the wave of online commerce. Still, the world should be ready to contend with the adverse effects of these activities on individual privacy as well as the privacy of corporations.

Online commerce creates avenues for illegal monitoring. What many people might see as a mere effort by companies to collect data and generate meaningful statistics, could as well be interpreted as ethical practices, considering the lack of consultation. The fact that companies can access individual profiles in different social media platforms, such as Facebook and use the information therein for marketing purposes without informing the users of these pagers, means that there is a grey area in data capitalism (West, 2019). Odupoy (2017) explores the possibility of attaining consumer privacy amidst the robustness of digital promotions. The study premises on the hypothesis that digital advertisements culminate in consumer privacy problems. A notable conclusion in Odupoy’s (2017) study is that social networking sites, including Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Google+ gather personal information without notifying the subscribers. Direct internet marketing activities will continue to be a thorn in the flesh of the consumers who care about privacy (Adelola, Dawson, & Batmaz, 2014). There are many instances where online marketers have acquired emails and phone contacts from social media and communicated to customers without prior notification. Such moves are contradictions of permission marketing (Odupoy, 2017). Stricter regulations are essential for capping the number of such incidences and cases, especially now that there is a growth in digital marketing activities.

Several countries in the world, including the United States have enacted laws and initiated policy procedure to protect the information privacy of consumers and corporations. This statement implies that surveillance activities have risen in the wake of e-commerce activities. These laws and procedures require the development of security architecture to support privacy protection. Developing countries are lagging behind when it comes to the development of such regulations. A case example of Nigeria reveals that these countries are unable to address the core issues revolving around the eight core principles of privacy, including data quality, collection limitation, purpose specification, openness, security safeguards, use limitation, accountability, and individual participation. Developed countries, among the United States and Australia, acknowledge that customer privacy is a weighty issue in this technological age; hence, the establishment of industry-driven customer dispute solving schemes (Adelola, Dawson, & Batmaz, 2014). Of a greater essence, is the need to develop and implement data protection principles, accompanied by laws to compel companies to respect data privacy.

Conclusion

Surveillance, especially in the current digital space, is growing, with both individuals and organizations preferring to use these technologies to enhance safety, security, and efficiency. The paper has shown that surveillance can be a critical pillar of effectiveness in organizations, especially when firms objectify their acquisition and usage. Ethical issues are emerging concerning the application of surveillance, most of which revolve around unauthorized access to employee information in organizations and user information in online communities. E-commerce activities are equally resulting in ethical and legal issues, where firms and individuals are accused of wrongfully acquiring and usage of customer information. The circulation of covert spying equipment in the absence of proper regulations leaves many people’s data exposed to the predatory tendencies of firms. More discussion on policy control on the usage of surveillance, especially in organizational set-up, is necessary. This concern arises out of the view that surveillance technologies continue to dominate the commercial space. The Christian worldview supports care for one another, meaning that surveillance is beneficial if it is only intended to enhance well-being.