Social Networking... Targeting?!

"Corporate social networking software measures, reads, and evaluates e-mails, instant messages, and calendar entries, capturing the names of message authors..." When I first read this, a whole different thought came into my mind than what the article talked about. I immediately thought about how businesses are watching, or you could say targeting, each employee. With the new technology innovations, companies are becoming more watchful of each employee. They track everything an employee does in their system and judges their character and work performance basically based off their personal life.

I just recently read an article in the paper that talked about a handful of employees that got fired for porn searching over 19,000 times in 2007 at work. I think in some cases, such as this, it is important to watch over your employees, because you obviously don't always know what they are doing. In such situations, it's evident that employees are not getting work done. Although this is only one example, I do think there are many situations where this would be an invasion of privacy. When I first heard about companies searching possible new graduate employees on facebook, I thought, well OK, maybe they want to see their work background or perhaps where they are from. Then, of course, I heard about companies not accepting some people based of pictures or comments, and then I thought, what do you expect from someone who was just in college and wanted to enjoy the rest of their freedom?! In some cases, it's necessary to search what employees are doing. My one question is where do you draw the line? How much searching is too much and constitutes as invading one's privacy?