The media, members of Congress and civil libertarians alike seem to have developed an overly voracious appetite for Carnivore.

The FBI’s much-publicized e-mail snooping software has been accused of taking too big a bite out of the privacy rights of Internet users. The little-used program, though, should be considered a mere appetizer to a far more dangerous dish served daily to millions of Americans.

Electronic surveillance in the workplace occurs too frequently, with too many methods to be described by a single nickname. But in all deference to legitimate concerns over the use of Carnivore, this is where the real meat is.

There’s nothing new about employers’ keeping an eye on workers. Over the last decade, though, digital technology has allowed supervisors to peek much closer into their workers’ lives and their minds.

Your bosses can secretly read your e-mail, listen to your telephone conversations and track where you’ve been surfing on the Internet without even visiting your desk. They can trace the numbers you dial on the phone, record the keys you strike on your keyboard and track the time you spend moving your mouse. And of course, they can watch you work on cameras you might not even realize are there.

Nowhere to hide

If you think this sort of thing doesn’t happen where you work, you’re probably wrong. A survey released earlier this year by the American Management Association found that 67 percent of large U.S. companies engage in some form of electronic monitoring or surveillance.

More than a quarter of the 1,054 companies surveyed monitored their employees’ e-mail, while one in five stored and reviewed computer files. The numbers in most categories had increased since a similar survey in 1997, showing surveillance is on the rise.

Companies justify snooping by citing millions of dollars worth of employee productivity lost to Web surfing and other computer time-wasters. And sure enough, the climate in many offices seems to almost encourage employees to make private use of corporate computers.

The Internet has helped companies decentralize, spreading operations into remote offices and, in some cases, employees’ homes. Many workers take company laptops home with them at night to check e-mail and file reports after hours.

Under these conditions, employees might assume they have a right to a little personal time on their company computer. It might seem a fair trade for their employers’ use of their homes and their “free” time.

Even in traditional office settings, personal Internet use is so widespread that secret surveillance almost seems like entrapment. If employers aren’t enforcing limits on Web surfing and heavy daytime traffic patterns suggest they aren’t workers can easily conclude their bosses don’t care enough to snoop.

It’s easy to understand, then, why people feel violated when their company spies on them. While employers have a right to make sure workers aren’t wasting time, their high-tech surveillance methods reveal not only the existence of a violation but also its nature the type of Web site visited or the content of e-mail messages. That’s more than employers need to know.

No legal restraints

Moreover, companies can monitor anyone they want, at any time, with no legal ramifications whatsoever. While the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches compels the FBI to use Carnivore only when it’s relevant to an investigation, it can’t stop your boss from reading your e-mail just for kicks.

With that in mind, it seems reasonable for workers to ask employers to play fair. If they’re going to spy on us, the least they can do is tell us about it.

A bill introduced last month in Congress would give that credo the force of law. The Notice of Electronic Monitoring Act would require employers to disclose their monitoring practices to workers when they’re hired and to release updates on their practices at least once a year.

The bill wouldn’t ban snooping, and it would allow secret monitoring if there’s reason to believe an employee is doing something that could harm the company or a co-worker. But it would serve to remind employees about how much interest their employers have in the portion of their private lives that plays out at work.

To contact syndicated columnist Joe Salkowski, you can e-mail him at [email protected] or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services Inc., 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, Ill., 60611.