Telework: spyware to massively monitor employees

Employee privacy is protected in many countries, but companies are increasingly monitoring their teleworking activities.

Here, an employee and her cat in Sassenheim, the Netherlands on October 2, 2020. REUTERS / Eva Plevier

Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow

5 mins

Teleworking had already taken an increasing place in the daily life of employees in recent years, and it is experiencing an unprecedented acceleration in 2020 with the Covid-19 epidemic.

But, a negative consequence of this development, companies are deploying software systems en masse to monitor their employees remotely, according to a survey by ISG.

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Fears of widespread cybersurveillance in the world of work are not mere fantasies of grumpy employees, according to a

by the consulting firm ISG, a specialist in research and technology consultancy for large international groups .

Looking at more than 2,000 companies around the world, the study finds that sales of software to monitor

employees

have increased by more than 500%

.

Widespread in the United States, the practice is regulated in France

In France, the National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (Cnil) has provided for a number of safeguards supposed to protect

.

These include the principle of proportionality in exercising this supervision and the obligation to inform staff representatives.

As Alexandre Lazarègue, a lawyer at the Paris Bar specializing in digital law, explains, the employer cannot use 

 these tools “

” “ 

 ”.

The principle of proportionality is the principle that individual freedoms must always be respected.

The CNIL has put in place a whole bunch of deliberations to regulate the use of technological tools by employees, to protect their privacy, which remains a fundamental right in the exercise of their professional life.

So the employer can introduce himself to control the work of the employee, but on the legal level, it is something that he cannot use against his employee or use it to explain that, given such or such elements, his work is not satisfactory.

Ultimately, he cannot use these tools to access elements that relate to the employee's private life.

According to Alexandre Lazarègue, lawyer at the Paris bar specializing in digital law, the employer cannot use these tools "legally" "against his employee"

Dominique desaunay

Screenshots, keystroke recording, clicks and conversations, photos via the webcam ...

These softwares make it possible to collect a lot of information from the employee.

One of the more sophisticated, which is called Hubstaff, offers to take a screenshot of the employee's computer every five minutes, or to track the GPS data of employees' phones.

Much more intrusive, CleverControl promises, with a lot of advertising inserts on the web, to " 

 ".

This by recording keystrokes and mouse clicks from the teleworker.

This system also captures employees' conversations through computer microphones, and even takes a picture of them by webcam to check if they are at their post.

These software are certainly very sophisticated, can be installed easily remotely and without your knowledge on equipment delivered by your company or on your personal computer.

But their use by employers is completely illegal, at least and for the moment in France, it should be specified.

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