Here is the key part of the article: > Straight-up Big Brother, perhaps, but it’s perfectly legal for businesses to keep an unblinking eye on employees as long

Here is the key part of the article: > Straight-up Big Brother, perhaps, but it’s perfectly legal for businesses to keep an unblinking eye on employees as long as they disclose they’re doing it. It is the companies equipment, network (on their side of the VPN), time, and so forth. That being said it is legally fine so long as they disclose they are doing so. If they monitor in ways that have not been disclosed they risk of a class action lawsuit should that knowledge be leaked to employees. Let's look at a far more extreme example: US Army. US Army is not allowed to monitor user activity in that way and all users of Army networks are made aware of this. Users must also sign their agreement to an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) before gaining access to the network. The Army example is more extreme because the Army owns the computers, the network, and all physical network infrastructure that companies typically lease to ISPs. The Army has the ability to monitor user activity in ways that companies cannot and yet the Army does not do so because it's illegal without a probable cause search warrant or command directive with legal authorization. For example, computers with an Army image monitor for attachment of mass storage devices and moment a phone or hard drive is plugged in the network administrator is immediately notified, the local network switch is automatically dropped from the network, and a report is automatically drafted for the respective violating unit. The Army can monitor for that because it is a violation of the AUP users signed, but they cannot monitor any associated content without probably cause and an AUP violation on its own is not probable cause. I have heard, on the other hand, the Air Force monitors absolutely everything because they require their users to sign a consent to monitoring directive to gain access to the network.