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When Big Brother Watches IT

Posted by samzenpus on from the cc-me dept.

bdking writes "In an effort to protect sensitive data from internal security threats, some organizations are 'using new technology to look at the language of their IT staff's emails to determine whether their behavior or mind-set has changed,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Is secretly spying on and linguistically interpreting employee emails going too far in the name of security? From the article: 'I understand the need to be aware of the attitudes of workers with high-level access to data and networks, but this strikes me as creepy. What if an IT employee suddenly has relationship problems or family issues? Will they then be flagged by HR as potentially troublesome or even a data security risk? And all without them even knowing there's a dossier being created of them and their "suspect" behavior?'"

1 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. A more important question. by khasim · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A more important question is why would anyone take anything said at "ITWorld" as factual?

    Has anyone here run into this before? What vendor?

    All of their examples seem wrong. The length of an email will change based upon the circumstances of that email. Is it advisory? Is it for documentation? Is it CYA?