Privacy on trial

Federal judges, it seems, have only recently discovered the severe loss of privacy in the American workplace. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Alex Kozinski, a judge on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, complained:

At the heart of the [new] policy is a warning – very much like that given to federal prisoners – that every employee must surrender privacy as a condition of using common office equipment. Like prisoners, judicial employees must acknowledge that, by using this equipment, their “consent to monitoring and recording is implied with or without cause” (“Privacy on Trial,” A22, 9/4/01).

Most of us in the workplace either know or can remember someone who, lacking any innate ability, attached him or herself to a rising star swinging on the fast vine through the office jungle. Often we wondered what the boss saw in such an underachiever. Later, we learned, it was our stray remarks or idle chatter, faithfully passed on and later used by the boss or a rival to torpedo a promotion or end a career. Much like the game played by informants and the KGB in the old Soviet Union – this person sold out by selling out others.

Today, employers have simply institutionalized the position of informant. Squirreled away, in unidentified rooms, these people scan banks of video cameras and watch the keystrokes of other employees. Phone call about a job interview? The boss will want to know. Marital problems – valuable information to a company rival intent on torpedoing your promotion. Checking stock quotes or visiting porn sites on the internet? Now part of your personnel file – but you’ll never know. Working on your resume? Duly noted. A career and political treasure trove for the cutthroat and unscrupulous.

By and large, the courts have given employers a green light and a pat on the back for this monitoring activity. Their rulings would have fit perfectly in feudal society, when the common man’s career choice was limited to deciding which landowner’s army he was going to die in. Having originated in government – this kind of snooping into private lives has now saturated the workplace – and is rapidly seeping out into public spaces, with the advent of red-light traffic cameras and facial recognition monitoring already employed in U.S. cities.

All this happened, Mr. Kozinski, not under your and your colleagues’ noses – but rather in your courtrooms. Case-by-case, decision-by-decision, you’ve collectively presided over the near obliteration of personal privacy in America. In its place, you’ve created a corporate-controlled state run by an elite corps of Peeping Toms, eager to sell out their fellow human beings for a pat on the back by the boss.

Having orchestrated this situation for the rest of us, Judge Kozinski now wants a free pass out of it. Furthermore – he expects us to become outraged about it! Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Kozinski: The news this week has already exhausted my supply of outrage. I’d like to make a phone call or write a letter over lunch to help you – but the economy is slowing and I need my job to feed my family through the downturn. I simply can’t risk the adverse entry in my personnel file.

Ironic, isn’t it? Tyranny’s servants always believe they’ll be spared when the patriots they’ve betrayed are dragged off to the firing squad or lined up at the steps leading to the gallows. But history shows that tyrants have an insatiable appetite for power and blood. Your turn to provide the latter comes when you can no longer supply the former.