The California Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s decision that a Children’s Center’s use of video surveillance was not a breach in privacy for the workers, but did believe employees had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
The Hillsides Children’s Center, which provides care for children who have been abused or who have special needs, discovered via its computer monitoring system that someone had been accessing pornographic websites from one of the terminals late in the evening.
The Center, concerned for the welfare of the children, set up cameras on the office area, which some workers believed was an invasion of privacy, even though the cameras were only turned on in the evening. To be successful, the plaintiffs needed to prove:
1. The plaintiff must possess a legally protected privacy interest,
2. The plaintiff’s expectations of privacy must be reasonable, and
3. The plaintiff must show that the intrusion is so serious in nature, scope, and actual or potential impact as to constitute an egregious breach of social norms.
The court believed the plaintiffs did have a legally protected privacy interest, and also had a reasonable expectation of privacy. However, given the nature of the business and reasons for surveillance, could not conclude that a reasonable person would find the privacy intrusion to be offensive and an egregious breach of social norms.
The company believed it was OK to videotape employees, and thought their computer monitoring policy would have diminished the employee’s expectation of privacy, but the court believed that since the policy never mentioned video surveillance, they had a reasonable expectation not to be videotaped at work.
The courts decision in this case strengthened both employee privacy rights and employer rights, establishing that employees do have a reasonable expectation of privacy at work, but employers videotaping workers under certain situations without their explicit consent is acceptable.
Fri, Aug 7, 2009
Video Surveillance