Is Your Boss Spying on You?

More stealthy and prevalent than ever before, corporate security software is monitoring your every move inside and out of the office, whether it’s with your corporate computer, e-mail, phone or BlackBerry. As PM’s senior technology editor reports in his biweekly trends column, your employer has more powerful tools to watch over you than the cops—and there’s nothing you can do about it. ...

Much of the technology used in business investigation is similar to, if not better than, the more talked-about tools used by police or sometimes even by the FBI and NSA. “Most local and state law enforcement agencies have no money to afford the sort of forensic software and hardware that big companies use,” Sensei’s Nelson says. “So the tools available to corporations are far more sophisticated.”

Plus, private corporations generally don’t have pesky warrants to deal with before they can access the digital evidence, as the law is still catching up to much of this new technology. Many corporate phone systems are now utilizing “unified messaging,” wherein voice messages are turned into audio files and integrated into e-mail programs. That makes them subject to the same security technology that combs through every one of your e-mails. And many industries are subject to regulations regarding the retention of data, so even if you want to get rid of a correspondence, your company is legally obligated to keep it. (more)