[zdragnar]

Property rights are more "first class" than privacy rights; in the US, the idea that a company is not allowed to monitor the use of company equipment by employees is absurd- to the extent that many institutions are regulated to require it (i.e. monitoring for data exfiltration, etc).

Of course, most companies' monitoring is pretty shallow and reasonable, but there are exceptions, and I certainly wouldn't choose to work for one of the exceptions.

[spaetzleesser]

That makes sense. Property ownership seems to be one of the most important values in the US. Which leads to property owners having the freedom to restrict the freedoms of other people. You can see that in companies where employees are assumed to basically have no rights while working. Same in the west here where property owners fence off large areas of land and nobody can pass through. In Germany there usually is some kind of path where people can pass through. This can make hiking in CA quite difficult because you often run into a fence.

[zdragnar]

Though there are historical reasons for allowing land owners to restrict unauthorized access, realize too that property extends to anything that can be owned, not just land.

If a company has a commercial kitchen, it seems reasonable to be to prohibit employees from running their own food delivery startup out of the kitchen... If you get access to a company car (I.e. travelling salesman), the company should reasonably expect to be able to take action against you if you use ot to go drag racing, or for a personal vacation.

Likewise, the notion that an employee should expect to have free reign over a company computer and company internet access is just strange to me.