Privacy Concerns
RTLS may be seen a threat to privacy when used to determine the location of people. The newly declared human right of informational self-determination de:Informationelle Selbstbestimmung gives the right of prevent one's identity and personal data from disclosure to others, and also covers disclosure of locality as well, though this does not generally apply to the workplace.
Several prominent labor unions have come out against the use of RTLS systems to track workers calling them "the beginning of Big Brother" and "an invasion of privacy". However, this loss of privacy may be outweighed by other benefits to staff. For example, Toronto General Hospital is looking at RTLS to reduce quarantine times after an infectious disease outbreak. After a recent SARS outbreak, 1% of all staff were quarantined, and more accurate data regarding who had been exposed to the virus could have reduced the need for quarantines.
Read more about this topic: Real-time Locating System
Famous quotes containing the words privacy and/or concerns:
“Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a more private and familiar, and at the same time, a more public and universal word, than is spoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“New inventions can and will be made; however, nothing new can be thought of that concerns moral man. Everything has already been thought and said which at best we can express in different forms and give new expressions to.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)