Rethinking privacy

It was a Big Brother kind of week in Iowa City, what with talk of traffic cameras and a hospital supervisor apparently using a baby monitor to spy on staff. A good week to recall the adage: You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Clerks and secretaries at a University of Iowa Hospitals urology clinic filed complaints with their union and police last week after discovering a baby monitor hidden in their work area.  They say a supervisor planted it there because she was concerned they were being too chatty.

The UI says two hospital staff members were disciplined for their role in Babygate, but a spokesman declined to say who was punished or how, calling that “confidential personnel information.”

Which is a little poetic, considering that we're to assume the employees were disciplined (literally, here) for violating employees' privacy.

Officials insist no conversations were monitored and no patients' privacy compromised. They say baby monitoring employees is not in keeping with the hospital's values.

Or state law, which clearly prohibits electronically monitoring or recording communications without at least one party's knowledge. Violating that law is no joke - it's a felony.

But let's say the secretaries really were neglecting work for gossip. Doesn't their employer have a right to know?

I called ACLU of Iowa legal Director Randall Wilson. He couldn't talk specifically about Babygate, but he said when employees give up privacy rights at work, it's based on agreement “express or implied” - like an e-mail policy outlined in the employee handbook, or an obvious video camera mounted by the cash register.

Just because they're paying you doesn't mean they own you - something supervisors may want to copy down and tack up on an office wall.

You're welcome.

Speaking of cameras, Iowa City Council members now are considering whether to install red-light cameras at accident-prone city intersections. So far, their opinions are split down that familiar line between public safety and privacy.

I've always sided with the camp that says you've got nothing to fear from red-light cameras if you don't run red lights. But now I'm thinking: What if I applied that same argument to Babygate? People don't have to worry about being spied upon unless they are doing something wrong? That's just creepy.

It reminded me of something else that Wilson said: “The right of privacy is not an abstract concept. It really means something.”

That meaning isn't fixed; it's something we're deciding even now.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net