In Germany, widespread spying is back, this time electronically by corporations

Hundreds of thousands of employees have had their mobile phone, e-mail and computer records secretly searched. Companies say they did it to expose misconduct.Growing up in West Germany, Lothar Schroeder never knew that terrible sense of violation suffered by people in the communist East at the hands of the secret police who tailed them, bugged their homes and recruited neighbors and even family members to snitch on them.Now he knows.But it’s not a totalitarian state doing the snooping this time; it’s some of the country’s largest corporations — big names in telecommunications, transportation and retail.Last year, authorities informed Schroeder that Deutsche Telekom had secretly combed through his cellphone records, apparently to root out the source of leaks to the news media. Schroeder, a union representative on the company’s board of supervisors, was stunned.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-germany-spying23-2009may23,0,1524773.story