Being Big Brother: Monitoring employees’ network activity
Big brother is watching. In today’s security-conscious world, it has become a fact of life. George Orwell coined the term to refer to government intrusion into the private lives of citizens, but the meaning has expanded to include any authority figure. The law recognizes that there are circumstances in which monitoring of others’ activities is permissible or even desirable. In general, employers have a lot of leeway in monitoring what their employees do while on company premises and using company equipment.