The Ethics of Employees’ Surveillance in the Context of Rapid ICT Development Dalibor PETROVIĆ Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering, University of Belgrade, Vojvode Stepe 305, Belgrade, Serbia d.petrovic@sf.bg.ac.rs Abstract — Rapid development of modern information and communication technologies (ICT) has raised many ethical issues and concerns in every segment of human life. Sphere of work is not an exception in this respect. In line with that, one of the main questions that we deal within this paper is related to the role of ICT in power struggle between main actors in the field of work. The first part of this paper deals with the key concepts like surveillance ethics and digitalisation of surveillance in the workplace. Special attention is given to the development of employees’ surveillance and changes in the range and scope of workplace surveillance. Our basic presumption is that surveillance practices has increasingly been normalizing. In other words, employees are taking surveillance for granted as a natural thing and inseparable aspect of their work surroundings. In the second part of the paper we shortly discus the most important findings of research about surveillance in Serbian enterprises conducted in 2016. Keywords — ICT, surveillance, technology ethics, workplace, employees I. INTRODUCTION Today, practice of surveillance is deeply rooted into everyday life and work, capital flows and career development. This is not a new phenomenon since there is a long history of state surveillance. Besides governments, modern corporations are equally responsible for the mass expansion and normalization of surveillance in modern society [1]. However, comparing to the earlier periods the scale and intensity of surveillance are now unprecedented, which is to a large extent the consequence of the intensive development of ICTs [2]. Earlier, one had to be suspicious in order to provoke a surveillance mechanism to start operating. Today, monitoring, prioritization and judgment take place in a wide area with very short time delay on all of us. It is based on continuous sorting, identification, setting priorities and monitoring of all individuals or behaviour and characteristics of a particular group of people in real time [3]. This means that digitalization leads to automatisation of surveillance. What is crucial is that the operations of human operators are shifted from direct intervention and discretion to the design, programming, monitoring and maintenance of semi or fully automated surveillance systems. This is also important because digital surveillance technologies are extremely flexible and ambivalent. On the one hand, the system can be designed to execute social exclusion based on an automated assessment of social or economic values. On the other hand, the same system can be programmed to help overcome social barriers and marginalization of different social groups. In addition, digital surveillance is more comprehensive than traditional one and contains a variety of measures making it more intense and extensive. That is why surveillance can be define as a mean of social sorting. In Lyon words: “It classifies and categorizes relentlessly, on the basis of various – clear or occluded – criteria. It is often, but not always, accomplished by means of remote networked databases whose algorithms enable digital discrimination to take place. Its categories are constructed in socio-technical systems by human agents and software protocols and are subject to revision, or even removal. And their operation depends in part on the ways that surveillance is accepted, negotiated, or resisted by those whose data is being processed” [4, p.8]. In line with that the key question we are dealing trough this paper is how much the rapid development of ICT has strengthened the practice of surveillance and whether its widespread use is in accordance with ethical principles of the modern society. It is therefore important to study the development of workplace monitoring in order to understand why employees are subjected to such an intensive surveillance and control. II. SURVEILLANCE ETHICS The practice of surveillance is affecting many spheres of interpersonal relationships raising up numerous questions. It has impact on privacy, human rights, power and empowerment, social exclusion and so on [5]. But above all these there are ethical issues that are arising as a consequence of widespread surveillance in the contemporary society. What about our right to anonymity, privacy, intimacy, etc.? Can we really say that in the last resort surveillance brings more good than harm for society and for us as individuals? Surveillance is itself an ethically neutral concept but what determines it`s ethical nature depends on several factors such as justified cause, the means employed, and questions of proportionality [6]. One of the first set of ethical principles regarding surveillance practice, named “The Code of Fair Information Practices” had been issued 1973 by the U.S. Health, Education and Welfare Department [7]. This code was based on five basic principles: 1) There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret; 2) There must be a way for a