“Can we borrow your phone? Employee privacy in the BYOD era”
Pages | 397-411 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-09-2015-0027 |
Published date | 13 November 2017 |
Date | 13 November 2017 |
Author | William P. Smith |
Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information & communications technology |
“Can we borrow your phone?
Employee privacy in
the BYOD era”
William P. Smith
Department of Management, Towson University, Towson, Maryland, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This paper aims to (a) summarize the legal and ethical foundations of privacy with
connections to workplace emails and text messages, (b) describe trends and challenges related to
“Bring Your Own Device”(BYOD), and (c) propose legal and nonlegal questions these trends will raise
in the foreseeable future.
Design/methodology/approach –Based on a review of legal casesand scholarship related to workplace
privacy,implications for BYOD practices are proposed.
Findings –Primarily due to property rights, employers in the USA have heretofore been granted wide
latitude in monitoringemployee communications. The BYOD trend has thepotential to challenge this status
quo.
Originality value –BYOD programs present discernablethreats to employee privacy. Attention is also
directedtoward contributing elements such as wearabletechnology, cloud computing and companycultures.
Keywords Ethics, Email, Privacy, Text messaging, Bring your own device, Legal cases
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
We begin with a metaphor. A co-worker (we shall refer to as “Joe”) comes to your home to
collaborate on a work-related project. After a few hours of work, Joe asks to use your
bathroom. While there, he looks inside the medicine cabinet, drawers and closets. He then
leisurely enters a room with an open door. He examines some photo albums on a bookshelf
(containing a few silly pictures taken from a recent vacation). He notes a box marked
“Health”that contains invoicesand diagnoses from recent medical visits. On a table he sees
a folder labeled “Banking”, learns the name of your financial institutions and inspects
various transactions. After Joe returns, you remain unaware of his actions and whether he
will keep what he has learnedto himself or share it all with others.
Has Joe invaded your privacy? While you may feel a sense of violation, lacking any
evidence that Joe has targeted you forhis snooping, in the eyes of the law, Joe is no criminal.
He has neither taken nor damaged any of your possessions.Attempts to bring a civil action
against Joe would unlikely yield significant results. After all, you allowed Joe to come to
your home to assist you with a work project. You declined to accompanyhim after granting
permission to use the bathroom. Joe encountered an open room with unsecured personal
material with no indication it was confidential or off limits for anyone’s inspection. At no
time did you and Joe agree about what he could or could not inspect when he entered your
home. If Joe is guilty of any transgression, perhaps a misplaced trust has made you at least
partially complicit.
Even though Joe’s legal accountabilitymay be remote, it remains difficult to muster any
serious defense of his actions. Individually, his inquiries may be trivial (e.g. half of people
Employee
privacy in the
BYOD era
397
Received1 September 2015
Revised25 May 2016
Accepted26 May 2016
Journalof Information,
Communicationand Ethics in
Society
Vol.15 No. 4, 2017
pp. 397-411
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-09-2015-0027
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