Employee monitoring is not new. Its origins can be traced back to the time and motion studies of the 19th century, if not to the start of the industrial revolution.

Even then, managers and business owners used the latest technologies to improve workers’ productivity. These included Frederick Taylor’s use of precise timing in the late 1800s, and Frank and Lilian Gilbreth’s pioneering motion picture techniques in the early twentieth century.

Whether workers found these methods intrusive is open to debate; certainly the trades unions opposed much of Taylor’s theory of scientific management. But at least those on the shop floor knew they were being watched and their performance measured.

Modern employee surveillance, on the other hand, can be carried out without workers’ knowledge,

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