I did not find anything un-natural in this article. I think the behavior of both the employer and the employee shows the psychology of a human being. Every human is born with a Devil and a Saint in himself. There occurs some kind of formal or rigorous fight among the both, before a human comes to a conclusion on a certain issue. I believe that in the absence of every external pressure, there is a greater tendency for the Devil to prevail because one finds it easier to go evil rather than being righteous. External pressure in this case may be religious restrictions, ethical values or some kind of administrative orders. So this is above any discussion that to keep harmony in a society or at some work place, there must be some kind of restrictive force. But a number of pages can be colored debating how, when, where and to what extent this restrictive force should be applied.
On the behalf of an employee, I would say that it must be stated and announced if there is some kind of spying at a work place. Employees should also be informed of the extent to which they are being observed. It is undoubtedly the right of an employer to keep an eye on what his workers and staff are doing in their office timings but not after or before the office time. An employer must not care of which activities his staff is involved in off office. He should not also be worried if his employee is lying to him once he has given him the leave. But it is totally the right of an employer to allow his worker to go on a leave or not. It is also quite natural for a human being to spend some time on surfing or having a chit chat on his phone after a constant work of two odd hours. So it should not matter a great deal to the employer.
As an employer I would emphasis on the necessity of being loyal, dedicated and trust worthy for an employee. If an employee lies to his boss about something no matter if it is related to the boss or not but it definitely creates trust deficit in relationships.
Conclusively, it is not a rocket science to keep things nice and simple. Both the employer and an employee should be well aware of their limits and nothing should be hiding. I believe it should not be any problem if both of them go by the predefined rules and ethics.
