The Corporate Iron Curtain

CISO Paul Raines contrasts employee rights in the US and Europe

Next, consider the right to privacy in the workplace. In the United States you often lose your right to privacy when you walk in the door on the first day of work. Workers can be subject to drug testing at the time of their hire and, if the company desires it, at random times from that point on. Emails and any personal information generated on company computers belong to the company and can be reviewed. Security cameras are in the work place not just for security but the digital images are often used as evidence to discipline employees.

In Europe, privacy is considered a fundamental human right. ECHR Article 8 protects European workers' right to privacy in their correspondence. Thus, monitoring of emails, phone conversations and internet usage; the use of intrusive CCTV coverage or vehicle tracking devices; or subjecting employees to searches or to drug or alcohol testing, is sharply curtailed if not outright prohibited.

Hence, employers cannot read the personal emails of their employees even though the email was created, delivered and stored on company property using company equipment. Employers also cannot have security cameras in the work areas monitoring the employees at their desk. The last private American company I worked for did precisely that. If an employee was found on camera to be resting their head on their desk for a prolonged period during business hours then that was a cause for dismissal. Needless to say, no one in the company believed in "power naps."

I do not mean to paint a too rosy picture of work life in Europe. You have petty politics, gossip, bad and good bosses in Europe the same as in the United States. But in the area of worker rights, the difference is truly stark and that, in turn, it affects the responsibilities of the security function in enforcing those legal rights in the workplace.

In March, 1946 Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in which he famously declared that an "iron curtain" had descended which separated the free democratic countries of the west from the Soviet dominated, communist countries of Eastern Europe. This figurative image became the defining metaphor of the Cold War to outline the differences between the liberties enjoyed in the free west and the lack of those same freedoms in the Eastern Bloc. Having worked in both Europe and the United States, I can clearly see a similar iron curtain of workplace liberties now dividing the two regions. The difference is, this time theUnited States is on the wrong side of the iron curtain.