While what constitutes privacy in the workplace can be a philosophical
issue, the truth is that there is very little in U.S. law that prevents
employers from monitoring communications and work activities of their
employees.  They do, in some cases, have to notify workers (and
customers) that conversations are monitored.  Policies declaring company
owned equipment is limited to company business or that use of company
owned equipment is monitored or that e-mail communicated on company
owned equipment is monitored and not considered private transactions are
perfectly legal and quite often in place.  The monitoring and policies
are based on logical reasoning and not just the opportunity for the
employer to be "big brother" or nosey.

The EU and several other countries have different approaches to privacy
issues.  For those who want to wade through the summaries of 26 or so
U.S. privacy laws (and can stay awake doing it), I presented an ARMA
International Education Foundation paper entitled "USA Federal
Requirements for Personal Information Protection" at the Las Vegas
Conference on this subject.  It is available for free download at
http://www.armaedfoundation.org/reports.php.  There is an overview
spreadsheet of the laws at the end of the paper.

Ginny Jones
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI)
Records Manager
Information Technology Division
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities
Newport News, VA
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