Insights: Focus on the dangerous, not the ordinary – and business tracking of employee


Washington, D.C. – Half of Congress takes a stand for freedom. But what about the other half?

The House of Representatives says no to the National Security Agency. NSA must stop grabbing metadata about every phone call in America—who called who, when, and how long the call lasted.

New legislation would replace the Patriot Act which both Bush and Obama Administrations used to snoop on us.

But the U.S. Senate seems to buy into claims that government never knows when it might need our personal information to track terrorists. 

The entire Patriot Act expires June 1st, so Senators plotting to block the reforms hope the House would be cornered and would extend the old law rather than let the non-controversial parts die. That means the snooping would continue.

Senators are playing political games and Americans need to tell them so. Our intelligence agencies should focus on dangerous people, not spy on everyday people.

Then there’s a boss who didn’t just monitor a worker; he stalked them.

A California woman is suing her former employer because they gave her an iphone, but used it to track what she did on her own time, 24/7. When she disabled the special tracking app, they fired her.

Myrna Arias says it was okay for her boss to monitor her sales calls during work hours. But then the boss bragged that he could tell if she was speeding in the evenings, where she went, and for how long. The company refused to turn off the tracking function after work hours. So she disabled the app and got fired for it.

Myrna is suing for invasion of privacy. The lawsuit might hinge on why she didn’t leave the iphone in her desk after work. 

Perhaps her employer required her to carry it even then.