This wasn't always the case though, before the digital age, the affordability for phone and voice mail surveillance equipment was out of range for the majority of companies . The ability for employer to monitor employee was very limited thus giving the employee the by-product of personal privacy. Enter the digital-age. Email transactions can be stored on servers for just about any duration of time with almost instantaneous retrieval rates. Phone and voice surveillance equipment is so affordable that even small businesses are investing in them.
Video cameras are commonplace due to the rise of theft and violence in the workplace.
It is fair to say that it's not only the government you have to protect your personal privacy from in the digital era, but your employer as well. In a case where the government was the employer, in 1994 a case of Department of Defense v. Federal Labor Relations Authority , the Supreme Court upheld the interest of employees in seeing to that their home addresses were not given out by federal agencies. In the Supreme Court Case O'Conner v. Ortega, the issues of employee privacy and personal space were on trial. The Court also made clear that the Fourth Amendment protected individuals from unreasonable searches where the employer could define the conditions that would make the searches reasonable. Accounts of employees being fired for misuse of company time and equipment such in the case of Xerox Corporation firing 40 employees for inappropriate use of the Internet at work is becoming more and more common.