From: robert.heuman@rose.com (robert heuman)
Subject: Monitoring
Organization: Rose Media Inc, Toronto, Ontario.
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 03:58:51 GMT
X-Gated-By: Usenet <==> RoseMail Gateway (v1.70)


Date Entered: 12-18-92 22:51
vanembur@romulus.rutgers.edu (Bill Van Emburg) questions my comment so 
I will explain my position:

I said, originally:
.... I have 
great difficulty with making telephone calls to various US Software 
houses and their support lines where I am told that the call will be 
monitored to ensure that I receive quality support... after I listen 
to the musak...

Bill asks: 
V> I don't really understand the problem here.  Is it that the company
V> could record the conversation, thereby having a record of what you
V> said, and what they said?

    ... rest deleted...

I simple terms, I am a party to the telephone call, and I do NOT want 
to have it monitored.  A telephone call has two parties to it, the 
caller and the called.  If the employer of the called wants to monitor 
his/her employee, that is between the two of them (excluding the 
economic coersion involved due to the disparity in their relative 
positions within the organization the called works for.)  I, however, 
have a voice in the specific telephone call I have made, and I am NOT 
nor should be subjected to the whims of the called individual's 
employer, IF I DO NOT WANT TO BE.  Where is MY right to demand 
privacy?  I can mail a letter and write confidential on the envelope, 
and most organizations will deliver it unopened to the addressee.  My 
point is that I fully believe that I have the same right to 
confidentiality in a telephone call, if I request it. 

The type of activity that involves TELLING me that the call will be 
monitored (or even MIGHT be monitored) without giving ME the option of 
saying NO - under no circumstances do I want this call monitored... 
and having my position recognised and acceeded to violates MY right to 
privacy.  I understood the US Constitution to support one's right to 
this very concept, yet I continually find corporations and 
organizations in the US that deny me that privacy, or the ability to 
request that privacy.  It IS a problem to ME.  I really do NOT care 
what the nubulous 'company' has for a reason for monitoring the call. 
I want the call to be private.  If I am dissatisfied with the support, 
I can call again and go higher in the organization to express my 
displeasure.  That is MY call, and not some annonymous supervisor, who 
has no way of knowing MY views on the call itself, the information I 
obtained, or the reasons I may have had for anything I might have said 
during the call.  Quite frankly, on general principles I object to 
having my conversations subject to monitoring UNLESS I choose to make 
them public, such as in this forum.  That is not the same as the 
company at the other end deciding my call can be public.

To compound the problem a little, I am NOT physically in the US. 
There are international calls that are being monitored, and in some 
jurisdictions, the caller has legal right to demand this privacy and 
the called cannot provide it.  There are PRIVACY ACTs in the world, 
you know.

Lastly, before you state that I am not a US citizen, and therefore not 
entitled to the protections offered under the US Constitution, let me 
state that I AM a US citizen, resident outside the US, and am 
entitled to those protections in my communications, in MHO.

BTW, I am fully aware that the telco might be monitoring the line, to 
see if there is a physical problem affecting throughput, sound 
quality, etc., I have just as much difficulty with their doing this as 
I do with the reciepient's organization recording/monitoring the call.

To sum up all of the above, my problem is that I fully believe that I 
have a right to privacy that only I can lift, not some other party, as 
MY consent is required to remove that right.  My consent is never 
obtained in the scenario I describe.  Therefore I have a problem with 
it.

Bob Heuman <robert.heuman@rose.com>
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