Abstract

Electronic performance monitoring is expanding rapidly in public and private sector environments amidst evidence that when privacy concerns are raised by employees in arbitration and judicial proceedings, there is limited empirical foundation for what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy among everyday citizens. This study replicates and expands on Rainie and Duggan’s U.S. study of the acceptability of facial recognition-enabled camera surveillance in the workplace with three separate Canadian survey sample populations. We find that private sector workers tolerate cameras in the workplace more than public sector workers and that the younger age cohort, for both private and public sector workers, is more likely to tolerate cameras in the workplace than the older cohort. Further, through analysis of qualitative comments among those ambivalent about camera surveillance at work, we find that concerns over transparency, safety and authoritarianism were the most frequent themes. These results point to the considerations employers must face for surveillance practices to be viewed as reasonable by employees in both public and private sectors.

摘要

有证据表明，当员工在仲裁和司法程序中提出隐私问题时，电子性能监控在公共和私营部门环境中迅速扩展，对于构成日常公民对隐私的合理期望的经验基础有限。这项研究复制并扩展了 Rainie 和 Duggan 在美国对三个独立的加拿大调查样本人群在工作场所启用面部识别摄像头监控的可接受性的研究。我们发现，私营部门的工作人员比公共部门的工作人员更能容忍工作场所的摄像头，而且对于私营部门和公共部门的工作人员来说，年轻的群体比年长的群体更可能容忍工作场所的摄像头。更远，通过分析那些对工作中的摄像头监控持矛盾态度的人的定性评论，我们发现对透明度、安全和威权主义的担忧是最常见的主题。这些结果指出了雇主必须面对的考虑因素，以使公共和私营部门的雇员都认为监视做法是合理的。