What is the New York electronic monitoring law?

Updated on 6 July 2026

The New York electronic monitoring law, Civil Rights Law section 52-c, enacted through Senate Bill S2628, requires every private employer with a place of business in New York State to give new hires written notice of electronic monitoring, obtain a written or electronic acknowledgement, and post the notice conspicuously. It took effect on 7 May 2022.

The requirement sits in the New York Civil Rights Law as section 52-c, added when Senate Bill S2628 was signed on 8 November 2021. It is a notice law rather than a prohibition. It does not restrict what an employer may lawfully monitor; it requires the employer to say so first, in writing, and to be able to prove that every affected employee saw it.

Which employers does the New York law cover?

The law covers any individual, corporation, partnership, firm or association with a place of business in New York State. There is no headcount threshold and no revenue test, so a three-person studio in Buffalo carries the same duties as a Wall Street bank. Government employers are excluded.

Coverage follows the employer's place of business, not the employee's desk. The statute does not spell out how fully remote staff who never enter the state are treated, so most cautious employers give the notice to everyone their monitoring touches. The cost of over-notifying is a signature; the cost of under-notifying is a penalty.

What does the law require before monitoring?

Three things, all procedural: an individual written notice, a recorded acknowledgement and a posted notice. Each has its own detail worth getting right.

When must the written notice be given?

Upon hiring. Every new employee who will be subject to electronic monitoring must receive prior written notice, which may be delivered on paper, in an electronic record or in another electronic form. A page in the offer pack or a step in the onboarding flow both satisfy it, provided the notice arrives before any monitoring of that employee begins.

What counts as an acknowledgement?

The employee must acknowledge the notice either in writing or electronically, so a signature, an e-signature or an onboarding checkbox all work. Keep the record. The acknowledgement is the employer's evidence of compliance, and it is the first thing to produce if the Attorney General ever asks.

Where must the notice be posted?

In a conspicuous place, readily available for viewing by the employees who are subject to monitoring. A staff noticeboard or a pinned intranet page is typical. The posting covers the whole workforce, including people hired before the law took effect, so it is not a duplicate of the individual notice; it is the ongoing half of the obligation.

What must the notice actually say?

The statute is specific. Employees must be advised that "any and all telephone conversations or transmissions, electronic mail or transmissions, or internet access or usage" may be subject to monitoring "at any and all times and by any lawful means", whether by computer, telephone, wire, radio or other electronic systems. Most employers reproduce the statutory wording, then add a plain-language description of the tools they actually run. The statutory text is the floor. A notice that also explains what is genuinely collected, and what is not, does more for trust than a recitation of the law.

What are the penalties for non-compliance?

Enforcement belongs to the New York Attorney General, and the civil penalties escalate per offence as summarised in the table below.

There is no private right of action, so an employee cannot sue under section 52-c directly. The realistic risks are an Attorney General investigation, the penalties above repeated across multiple findings, and the harder-to-price damage of a workforce discovering monitoring it was never told about.

Are there exceptions to the notice requirement?

One, and it is narrow. Processes designed to manage the type or volume of incoming or outgoing email, voicemail or internet usage do not require notice, provided they are not targeted to monitor a particular individual and are performed solely for computer system maintenance or protection. Spam filtering, malware scanning and storage management fit comfortably within it. A productivity tracker pointed at named employees does not.

Does the law restrict what employers can monitor?

No. Section 52-c is a transparency rule, not a limit: once notice is given, monitoring "by any lawful means" remains available. The qualifier matters, though. Federal and state rules on intercepting private communications still apply, and several other US states now run notice or privacy regimes of their own, with California layering full data rights on top; see the California employee monitoring rules for the strictest example. There is also the question the statute never asks: whether the monitoring is worth doing at all. Notice makes monitoring lawful; it does not make an archive of screenshots useful.

How does ScreenJournal reduce exposure under the New York law?

ScreenJournal is an AI work visibility tool that reads on-screen work as it happens, turns it into a detailed timeline of what each person actually did, and then deletes the raw screen data. Timelines accumulate into a searchable chronicle of everyone's work history, and from them ScreenJournal generates timesheets and reports automatically and drafts standup summaries on request, answering questions about any of it in plain English.

Compliance with section 52-c is procedural, and no tool replaces the notice, the acknowledgement or the posting. What a privacy-first design changes is what the notice has to admit and what the employer is left holding afterwards.

The disclosure becomes easy to write and easy to believe. What ScreenJournal keeps is a plain-English work timeline of each person's workday. It is scoped to work apps and work-related activity; personal activity is skipped in real time. Employees see the same activity view managers do, so the posted notice matches daily experience instead of hinting at a hidden system. The transient capture is video, deleted immediately during processing, which means there is no footage archive to secure, produce or explain later. Employees can also redact entries before a manager sees them, which sits comfortably alongside a notice-first legal regime. A redacted entry is erased entirely and never appears in anyone's search; redaction is unavailable only for roles a company flags as a data-leak risk.

For how this approach differs from screenshot trackers and surveillance suites, see ScreenJournal vs the alternatives, and for the thinking behind derive-and-discard, read We record work, not people.

Frequently asked questions

Does the New York law apply to remote employees outside the state?

The statute covers employers with a place of business in New York State and does not spell out how fully remote, out-of-state employees are treated. Most cautious employers give the notice to everyone their monitoring touches, because the cost of over-notifying is a signature and the cost of under-notifying is a penalty.

Do employees hired before May 2022 have to sign the notice?

The individual written notice and acknowledgement attach "upon hiring", so they apply to employees hired on or after 7 May 2022. Earlier hires are covered by the conspicuous posting requirement instead. Many employers collect acknowledgements from everyone anyway, which is inexpensive insurance and clearer communication.

Can an employee sue an employer for breaking the law?

No. Section 52-c is enforced exclusively by the New York Attorney General, with maximum civil penalties of 500 USD for a first offence, 1,000 USD for a second and 3,000 USD for the third and each subsequent offence. Employees have no private right of action under this law.

Is New York City's AI hiring law the same as the monitoring law?

No. New York City's Local Law 144 separately requires a bias audit and candidate notice before an automated employment decision tool is used in hiring or promotion. It regulates automated decision tools rather than workplace monitoring, and a city employer may need to comply with both.

This page is general information, not legal advice. Speak to your own counsel before relying on it.

ScreenJournal is currently available in India and the Philippines, with California and New York City coming soon.