Mobile Phones Used By Snooping Employers

The abuse of employees by employers using new technology continues with the latest development of 'snoop software' being employed via workers mobile phones.

The system uses GPS software to pinpoint the exact position of employees in the same way as satellite navigation systems pinpoint the positioning of a vehicle in order to provide road maps and directions for the driver to find their destination.

Developed by Trisent, a Scottish company, who deny that the system is spying on employees. They reject this claim based on the fact that the employee knows the system is installed in the phone and that it alerts them to the fact th4e system is switched on. However, such assertions do not convince those concerned about the use of such systems, because of course the warning can be switched off and that any illusion to the voluntarism of the system is illusive as using the phones will of course be compulsory upon employees issued with them.

Dr Gordon Povey, Trisent's founder and managing director, quoted by BBC News said, "Trisent's system works passively on everyday mobile phones, so it's always-on, is affordable, and works anywhere in the UK that has mobile coverage."

Public sector union Unison said the devices could damage trust and confidence between employers and staff. A spokesman for Unison in Scotland said: "There are a large range of adverse impacts of this sort of technology including damage to staff's privacy and to the trust and confidence between staff and employer, whether proposals are demeaning to staff and who has access to the information."

The system remains permanently aware of the mobile phone location, and is updated every time the phone user moves and keeps a record of where they were at any given time.

Of course there are serious civil liberty issues involved as the data from the system could be used by police when investigating suspects, even being used in family law cases.

Unison has raised concerns over the invasion of staff privacy, and gave this advice:

"We advise our representatives and branches to negotiate agreements covering the whole range of privacy-related monitoring and stress the need for employers to adhere to the law and only use techniques like this when absolutely needed, with the free consent of the worker and with the appropriate safeguards."

Further reading on this issue on BBC News Online

Source BBC News Online

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