WORKPLACE : Who’s Reading Your Mail?

When people are at work, “there is virtually nothing you do that can’t be monitored,” said Lou Malpi of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“There is no time you can relax that no one is watching.”

Courts have ruled that employers have the power to monitor private electronic mail, phone calls and computer work without notifying employees. Technology has made it easier.

“Monitoring a phone call is child’s play today,” Malpi said. “Not that many years ago you had to have a gumshoe put on a wiretap.”

The only legal restriction is that if the monitored call is clearly personal, the monitor must hang up after a “reasonable” period.

Companies themselves are vulnerable. The technology that allows employee monitoring also increases the potential for corporate espionage. The question is how to balance the rights of employees with the needs of employers to protect themselves.

WHO’S WATCHING

* 22% of firms report engaging in searches of employee computer files, voice mail, e-mail or other networking communications, according to a recent survey.

* About 71% of firms that monitor said they did so five times or less during the past two years.

* 18% of all firms had written policies regarding monitoring. This could mean 20 million Americans a year are subject to being monitored.

CRIME-BUSTING GADGETS

Consider the value of technology in some recent major crimes.

* NORTH’S E-MAIL: The key break in the investigation of the Iran-Contra scandal came when investigators recovered White House aide Oliver L. North’s e-mail. North thought he had erased it, but messages continue to exist on central computer files.

* SPY’S SECRETS: Aldrich H. Ames is the CIA agent who pleaded guilty last month to selling U.S. secrets to the Russians. Investigators made the case against him partly by setting up radio receivers outside his house that were able to read the keystrokes on his computer from as far as a mile away.

Source: MacWorld magazine survey of executives at 301 companies nationwide