Applying the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in the Workplace: Struggling to Keep Pace with Paradigm Shifts in Technology

What are the legal boundaries of an employee’s privacy in this interconnected, electronic-communication age, one in which thoughts and ideas that would have been spoken personally and privately in ages past are now instantly sent to friends and family via computer? This paper analyzes employee privacy rights in light of modern work-related monitoring and surveillance technologies and practices and the possible application of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to those monitoring practices. The analysis in this paper demonstrates that employees have minimal work-related privacy rights. While the ECPA may provide some privacy protections for employees, due to rapid changes in technology, the extent of privacy protections are unclear and in flux. Until the ECPA can be modernized to take into account twenty-first century technologies, there will be no clear boundaries for employee privacy.