In course of the years, people have opposed surveillance, seeing it as an invasion of privacy or a tool to suppress privacy issues. Dyed-in-the-wool campaigners and serious citizens have opposed bugging of phones, identity cards, security cameras, database linking and sundry other types of surveillance. While most of them have lobbied and campaigned against abuses and for legal or procedural restrictions, others have contrived ways of getting around surveillance, though not with much relief.

Had George Orwell been alive today, he would have surely said “I think we’re fighting a losing game, so far as keeping our privacy is concerned”. However, the fact remains that “Big Brother is watching you” wherever you are in Orwell’s dystopian world. The novel’s anti-hero, Winston Smith, has to huddle in the alcove of his living room to avoid the gaze of the “telescreen” which monitors him and every other citizen day and night. Constant surveillance was the keystone of Big Brother’s power.

Running parallel with resistance, we find a good many tough critiques of surveillance that have exposed its damaging impacts, both in terms of personal harm as well as social impairments (e.g. Gandy 1993; Dandeker 1990, Garfinkel 2000, Holtzman 2006; Lyon 1994; Marx 1988, Murray 1993 and many more).

However, such collaborative efforts have now bore fruit. Many countries have ruefully realized the ill effects of nonstop surveillance of innocent citizens, while some are going to ban workplace surveillance. For instance Germany is going to ban most workplace surveillance by way of introducing legislation against unlawful surveillance of lawful workmen (and women).

“Secret surveillance of employees can no longer be permitted in Germany,” said Michael Frieser, an expert on the subject with the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Merkel’s coalition has promised more legal certainty over video surveillance for both employers and employees by clearing up existing gray areas. The German parliament, the Bundestag, is scheduled to vote on the legislation by the end of January. Under the legislation, video surveillance must be publicized.

Companies such as the supermarket chain Lidl and the telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom have sparked incongruity by secretly filming their employees.

While the draft legislation aims to make these incongruities a thing of the past, surveillance of any kind in private areas – such as changing rooms, sleeping areas and restrooms – would be totally banned by the new law.

Why publicized surveillance would be held to strict standards too. Under the legislation, such surveillance could not be used to check the behavior or performance of employees, according to Gisela Piltz of the Free Democratic Party (FDP).