Nurses Fear 'Big Brother'
Joanna Frketich
Privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart was unavailable for comment yesterday, but spoke out against this type of continual surveillance of employees in a speech at Ryerson University this week.
"Continual surveillance is dehumanizing," she said. "There is a line to be drawn when it comes to surveillance and where this line is drawn cannot simply be dictated by whatever the latest technology can offer. Just because we can put workers under extreme surveillance doesn't mean we should."
MacLeod said HHS is interested in tracking employees because it would be helpful during outbreaks of infectious disease to know where exposed employees have been. But the union representing nurses at HHS believes it's to make sure staff are using their time effectively.
"It's in case we are stealing, thieving, horrible employees take a moment too long for our breaks," said Pat MacDonald, president of the Ontario Nurses' Association Local 70. "It's a horrible, horrible invasion of our privacy. That's like having a prisoner with a bracelet on the ankle."
HHS is already trying out the technology to track medical equipment on a cancer ward at McMaster University Medical Centre. MacLeod said tracking equipment is HHS's primary interest in RFID.
However, RFID tags could also be put on hospital bracelets to keep track of patients requiring higher security such as newborn babies or people with Alzheimer's, who have a tendency to wander. Tags could be put on the personnel badges of staff. It's the reason the McMaster University RFID lab working with HHS contacted the privacy commissioner for advice.
"The issue is how to weigh it off against privacy issues," said MacLeod. "Under what circumstances would it be the right thing to do?"
So far there is no answer. RFID has only recently become affordable enough to use for employee tracking. The most controversial instance was an Ohio security company that implanted two workers with RFID chips earlier this year to allow them to access company property.
The privacy commissioner specifically mentioned the Ohio case before saying she's "increasingly concerned about human dignity in the context of surveillance." MacDonald said she can't see any circumstance where monitoring employees with RFID would be acceptable.
"We have a right to privacy even at work. To know where we are every second of our existence in that building, that's too much Big Brother. It's very scary."
jfrketich@thespec.com