The University of British Columbia is fighting to keep its use of the “spyware” that lets it track employees’ Web-surfing habits while at work, according to The Province.
The Canadian institution fired one employee for allegedly spending hours online at non-work-related sites, along with other bad habits like showing up late and poor performance. The sites he was visiting included a mortgage site, a scuba site, and eBay. His union is seeking to get his dismissal overturned by an arbitration panel.
The British Columbia Privacy Commission, in the meantime, has ruled that the university violated the privacy of the employee, an engineering technician, by not telling him about the spyware. University officials have asked the British Columbia Supreme Court to throw out the commission’s ruling, arguing that they need to use the spyware to investigate misconduct of employees. —Dan Carnevale
