Why There Is Insufficient Protection of the Right of Privacy at the Workplace

Abstract

Data protection in general is a concern in today’s society. This concern raises questions such as, why private data is collected, how it is being collected and for what purpose. One historical example of this concern occurred during World War II. The SD (German: Sicherheitsdienst), the security service branch of the Nazi police (SS) identified political enemies and those not matching their ‘NS racist ideology’ from personal information obtained from German occupied countries. Madsen gives the example of how information of Jews and Sinti and Romanies, such as birth certificates were used to identify these ideological enemies. Also, voting records were used for identification of political enemies such as members of left wing groups. Data protection reaches all areas of our everyday life. It is also a very important issue in the employment context, because during work time we may not be aware that ‘spies’ (employer) could be around us. As Robert Spragues stated “Employees have virtually no privacy. Everything employees do, everywhere they go can be monitored by employers.