In the state of CA, it is legal for an employer to secretly get one of their employees to watch another employee and keep a log of their activity. By activity I mean, when the employee comes in, is at their desk or away from their desk, when the employee leaves or comes back from appointments or lunch, when employee leaves for the day, etc? This would seem inapproriate to me, especially if the spying employee does not know the exact activity of the other and is reporting based on limited information. For example: Spying employee is in their office. Spied upon employee comes into office but then leaves their desk for any number of reasons (such as to make a copy, send a fax, get a cup of coffee, or any other number of things.) When the spied upon employee returns to their desk and the spying employee finally sees them...they report that the employee has just gotten to their desk. So, what I'm saying is that for example, the employee is due at 9:30 but the spy reports they got in at 9:46 because that's when they first say the other employee at their desk.

Is this type of spying, using one employee to spy on another, illegal???

It doesn't seem right. Especially, if the employer is using the information they get from the spying employee as fact and it is incorrect, how can that be legal?

No it is not

I didn't think so. Would you care to add some more detail for me? Any backup that I can refer to or look into? If you know that it is not legal and you have any further information you can provide about that, I'd GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks very much.

My info notes that it is legal (not illegal) though maybe not very ethical. Hold for other opinions.

I believe panther was trying to say no, it is not illegal. I hope that's what he was trying to say, because it is not illegal. It may or my not be ethical but it there are no laws prohibiting it.

cbg is correct that is what I was saying

I thought probably so also (that is what you were saying) but OP seemed to think different &, therefore, I wanted to verify.

your question crosses across many legal lines..the act in itself is likely no illegal however if the information gathered is not gathered correctly and causes the employer to act contrary to fact then there could be legal issues that bleed in..