The Economist May 14th 2022 Leaders 15barging into workers’ personal lives, socialmedia accounts and
private devices at all times of the day.
The law is scrambling to adjust. In the state of New York em
ployees subject to electronic monitoring must be told in ad
vance, under a new law introduced on May 7th. Connecticut and
Delaware require similar disclosures. California is considering
new laws to strengthen privacy protections for workers, includ
ing a ban on digital monitoring without prior notice. The Euro
pean Union’s General Data Protection Regulation establishes
some basic rights for staff. Yet it is still early days and the tech
nology is advancing fast. As a result, most firms
are only just getting their heads around how
much remote work is likely to remain perman
ent. A clear boundary between embracing new
technologies on the one hand, and protecting
workers on the other, has still to be drawn.
There are perfectly legitimate reasons for
surveillance at work. Many jobs require monit
oring for safety, security and compliance. In
vestment banks’ traders are tracked to prevent insider dealing,
and the decisions of socialmedia moderators are traced and re
corded to ensure consistency and accountability. In the same
way that companies collect data on customers’ behaviour in
order to improve their products, so professional employers are
using monitoring tools to measure the productivity and engage
ment of their most important resource: their people. In the fu
ture such tools could help spot bad posture, root out bullying,
and identify and share best practice among staff.
Yet it is easy to see the pitfalls. There is a long history of thosewith power abusing those without in the name of compliance
and efficiency. In the most extreme cases, 20thcentury despots
ran vast informant networks, and some slave plantations in
America and the West Indies kept tyrannical work records.
Today’s workers are not indentured, obviously. But many
studies link excessive individual surveillance to higher levels of
stress. And if algorithms trained on biased data are used to make
more decisions, the odds of discrimination will rise. One analy
sis found that aisystems consistently interpret black faces as
being angrier than white ones.
What to do? As law and practice evolve, some
principles should govern workplace surveil
lance. Individuals must be fully informed, as
the New York law provides. Some firms now
disclose monitoring methods in the fine print
of their employee handbooks, and specify what
data managers have access to. But that is no
substitute for consistent, easily understood in
formation for staff—so they can decide how to
behave at work, and whom they choose to work for.
Employers should have a legitimate reason for surveillance.
Although the boundary will take time to establish through case
law and precedent, this is vital to ensure that monitoring is pro
portionate. Firms should not have access to employees’ private
devices, provided they are not used for work. And significant
decisions made by algorithms should be subject to appeal and
review by human beings. Establishing clear guidelines is not
easy, but qualms over the potential abuseofsurveillance will
grow. It’s time to start drawing some lines.nO
n paper, atleast, Sri Lanka is one of the wealthiest coun
tries in South Asia, ranked by the unon a par with much of
eastern Europe in terms of development. Yet the country of 22m
people is suffering severe food shortages, locked petrol pumps
and power cuts lasting as long as 13 hours a day. The currency has
lost nearly half its value against the dollar over the past two
months. Foreign reserves stand at $50m, too little to cover even a
day’s worth of imports and down from about $9bn in 2019. Last
month Sri Lanka admitted it could no longer service its foreign
debts. The country is broke.
Sri Lankans are furious. On May 9th protesters torched doz
ens of homes, most belonging to politicians, precipitating the
resignation of Mahinda Rajapaksa, the oncebeloved prime
minister (see Asia section). Security forces evacuated him and
his family to a naval base as a mob tried to storm his official resi
dence. Vigilantes have set up checkpoints outside the country’s
airports to prevent him and other officials from fleeing. A state
of emergency is in force. The army has been ordered to shoot
rioters and looters on sight.
How did it come to this? For an answer, look back to late 2019,
when Sri Lanka was still picking itself up after a devastating set
of terrorist attacks on Easter Sunday. Homegrown Islamists had
targeted three churches and three luxury hotels, killing more
than 250 people. Tourism, a big source of foreign exchange, tooka hit, with arrivals falling from 244,000 the month before the at
tacks to 38,000 the month after.
It was against this backdrop that Sri Lankans chose as presid
ent a man known for an ironfisted approach to security: Gota
baya Rajapaksa, who had brought to an end a 26year civil war as
head of the ministry of defence a decade earlier. Mr Rajapaksa, in
turn, appointed as prime minister his older brother, Mahinda,
who had been president from 2005 to 2015. The pair were seen as
vigorous, cando types, unlike the vacillators of the opposition.
Their party won parliamentary elections by a landslide.
Untrammelled authority seems to have gone to the Rajapak
sas’ heads. A twothirds majority in parliament meant that they
could have their way with the constitution—and they did, creat
ing an executive presidency that granted Gota control over the
appointment of ministers, judges and the heads of various nom
inally independent commissions. Many top jobs went to assort
ed brothers and nephews; others to retired or serving soldiers.
But even as the Rajapaksas appeared to be entrenching them
selves in power, they were actually undermining their own au
thority through illconceived policies. They slashed taxes as the
pandemic brought tourism to a screeching halt, which together
clobbered the economy and severely reduced government rev
enue and precious inflows of foreign exchange. Downgrades
from ratings agencies underlined the deteriorating economicSri Lanka is on the brink of collapse. The president must resignGota go
Sri Lanka’s crisis