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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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Australian workplace monitoring up for review By Vivienne Fisher, ZDNet Australia May 06, 2002 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Australian-workplace-monitoring-up-for-review/0,139023166,120265029,00.htm
Monitoring employees is under the spotlight, with a law reform agency report finding covert surveillance to be a growing and controversial industrial issue. The NSW Law Reform Commission has released its Surveillance: Interim Report, which looks at issues such as employer's monitoring of e-mails, video surveillance in the workplace, as well as the use of listening devices by police and other law enforcement authorities. Peter Hennessy, executive director at the NSW Law Reform Commission, said it had been asked to review NSW listening devices legislation, and also have a look at the broader issue of surveillance in public places and in the workplace. -The purpose of the review was to look at bringing the legislation up-to-date -- the current version of the listening devices act is 1984, and there's been enormous technological developments since then," Hennessy said. -There's a whole range of different sorts of devices used for law enforcement purposes, some of which are not covered by current legislation," he added. As part of its Interim Report, the NSW Law Reform Commission also looked at the whole issue of what's happening in the area of covert surveillance. Hennessy said this was to decide whether the current regulatory regime was appropriate and, if it wasn't, to come up with recommendations about how it could be improved. The report found that surveillance in an employment context had serious privacy implications, even narrowly focussed surveillance which might be intended only to capture work-related matters. It stated that the current regulatory framework didn't provide comprehensive regulation of surveillance by employers. -Many forms of surveillance are, at best, only indirectly regulated," according to the report. -Furthermore, in order to trigger the indirect protection of industrial remedies, such as relief against unfair dismissal, extreme circumstances must be involved." Hennessy said the Commission would be carrying out further consultation with those who would be affected if its recommendations came into effect.
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