Opinion ID: 739069
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Privacy Interests in the Appellants' Workplace.

Text: 24 We begin with first principles. It is simply implausible to suggest that society would recognize as reasonable an employee's expectation of privacy against being viewed while toiling in the Center's open and undifferentiated work area. PRTC did not provide the work station for the appellants' exclusive use, and its physical layout belies any expectation of privacy. Security operators do not occupy private offices or cubicles. They toil instead in a vast, undivided space--a work area so patulous as to render a broadcast expectation of privacy unreasonable. See O'Connor, 480 U.S. at 717-18, 107 S.Ct. at 1497-98. 25 The precise extent of an employee's expectation of privacy often turns on the nature of an intended intrusion. See id. at 717-18, 107 S.Ct. at 1497-98; id. at 738, 107 S.Ct. at 1508 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). In this instance the nature of the intrusion strengthens the conclusion that no reasonable expectation of privacy attends the work area. Employers possess a legitimate interest in the efficient operation of the workplace, see id. at 723, 107 S.Ct. at 1500-01, and one attribute of this interest is that supervisors may monitor at will that which is in plain view within an open work area. Here, moreover, this attribute has a greater claim on our allegiance because the employer acted overtly in establishing the video surveillance: PRTC notified its work force in advance that video cameras would be installed and disclosed the cameras' field of vision. 4 Hence, the affected workers were on clear notice from the outset that any movements they might make and any objects they might display within the work area would be exposed to the employer's sight. 26 The appellants concede that, as a general matter, employees should expect to be under supervisors' watchful eyes while at work. But at some point, they argue, surveillance becomes unreasonable. In their estimation, when surveillance is electronic and, therefore, unremitting--the camera, unlike the human eye, never blinks--the die is cast. In constitutional terms, their theory reduces to the contention that the Fourth Amendment precludes management from observing electronically what it lawfully can see with the naked eye. This sort of argument has failed consistently under the plain view doctrine, and it musters no greater persuasiveness in the present context. 5 See 1 LaFave, supra, § 2.7(f) (expressing skepticism about finding a Fourth Amendment violation by fixed police video surveillance of a person's public activities). When all is said and done, employees must accept some circumscription of their liberty as a condition of continued employment. See INS v. Delgado, 466 U.S. 210, 218, 104 S.Ct. 1758, 1763-64, 80 L.Ed.2d 247 (1984). 27 Once we put aside the appellants' theory that there is something constitutionally sinister about videotaping, their case crumbles. If there is constitutional parity between observations made with the naked eye and observations recorded by openly displayed video cameras that have no greater range, then objects or articles that an individual seeks to preserve as private may be constitutionally protected from such videotaping only if they are not located in plain view. See Taketa, 923 F.2d at 677. In other words, persons cannot reasonably maintain an expectation of privacy in that which they display openly. Justice Stewart stated the proposition in no uncertain terms three decades ago: What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351, 88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). Consequently, no legitimate expectation of privacy exists in objects exposed to plain view as long as the viewer's presence at the vantage point is lawful. See Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 133, 137, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 2305-06, 2308, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990); Oliver, 466 U.S. at 179, 104 S.Ct. at 1741-42. And the mere fact that the observation is accomplished by a video camera rather than the naked eye, and recorded on film rather than in a supervisor's memory, does not transmogrify a constitutionally innocent act into a constitutionally forbidden one. 6 See 1 LaFave, supra, § 2.7(f) (stating that individuals can record what is readily observable from a nonintrusive viewing area). 28 The bottom line is that since PRTC could assign humans to monitor the work station continuously without constitutional insult, it could choose instead to carry out that lawful task by means of unconcealed video cameras not equipped with microphones, which record only what the human eye could observe. 29