US corporates keep eagle eye on staff email

NEWS Almost half of all US companies monitor employees phone calls, emails and computer files, according to research from the American Management Association (AMA). The results show an overall increase of 10 per cent from 1997. Email monitoring is up from 20.2 per cent in 1998 to 27 per cent for this year. Only telephone use, in terms of numbers called and time spent is looked at more. Email is most closely monitored by public administration bodies with 30.8 per cent checking all employees. This figure falls to 19.2 per cent for non-profit organisations and 28 per cent for financial institutions. However, David Taylor, chief executive of Certus, said: "In this country I don't know of anyone outside the regulated industries who does this. The way forward is to trust people. If you introduce rules people will try and get round them. Why not trust them first and if they abuse that trust then take it away." He added that the idea of corporate IT departments introducing such surveillance is disturbing.