Verified Person, a company that provides employee background checks, has a new product to offer its corporate clients: constant screening of currently employed employees. You can read a transcript or listen to the interview on NPR’s Marketplace, which featured a story about this yesterday afternoon (May 8, 2006).
On the one hand, Verified Person point out specific instances where current employees, like a pharmacist who was also manufacturing and selling drugs on his own as a side business, were caught and removed, thus saving the public from harm. And they argue that criminal acts are a matter of public record, so there are really no privacy issues involved. Don’t want people to find out what you’ve done? Just don’t do anything bad.
On the other hand, does anyone like the idea of being constantly monitored? Where does the line between your work life and private life lie? It’s things like this that make me wonder how people ran businesses 50 years ago. There was no such technology back then, and businesses seemed to thrive fine. Has life really gotten so complicated that basic trust is no longer good enough?
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