Unlocking AI’s Power to Multiply Manufacturing Productivity
GoodwinPatrick McCarthyNovember 30, 2023
may be drawn.In the 2009 case of Haggins v. Verizon New England, Inc., a group of employees, represented by their union, sued their employer for requiring field technicians to carry company-issued cell phones so it could track their location. The employees claimed the policy violated their privacy rights under the Massachusetts Constitution and state law. The district court dismissed the case, and the First Circuit affirmed the dismissal. Notably, the district court introduced a precedent-setting balancing test, weighing employers’ interests in assessing employee effectiveness against employees’ rights to privacy.In 2015, an employee who was terminated for deleting tracking software from her mobile device pursued a wrongful termination suit. The case settled out of court, leaving no legal precedents but highlighting tensions between employee autonomy and employer surveillance.Some states have placed limitations on how and when employers may track the location of individuals. Notably, Section 637.7 of the California Penal Code restricts the use of electronic tracking devices unless the tracker is the registered owner or lessor of the vehicle.The significance of such state-level interventions is evident in a 2017 class action settlement, in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in favor of plaintiffs against the Bay Area Rapid Transit District for allegedly collecting location and other data from the personal devices of riders without clear user consent.In a watershed moment in 2018, the US Supreme Court ruled that collecting “cell site location information” without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The court underscored the heightened privacy concerns associated with accessing personal location data compared to vehicle location data.It is unclear whether tracking employees within the confines of private property, such as a factory, would render such surveillance less susceptible to scrutiny than tracking em
