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The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

theguardian.com

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Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#11

Post by lotsofpulp »

throw2016 wrote: post #8

These kind of tech has always been marketed to enterprises under various ruses. It's persistent. If the company happens to have immature control freaks in decision maker roles then they manage to sell. Ultimately its culture and the decision makers get to decide. Monitoring is of course downwards and those making the decision do not get to be monitored in this intrusive fashion.

Except we’re getting better at quantifying, and the better we are at it, the more we can optimize. Factory workers didn’t use to be measured, but then they were. And now they’re automated. Many aspects of white collar jobs are not impervious to this either. As we move up the chain, we’ll see that even more can be measured and optimized, even for the decision makers. Just make sure you keep climbing!

Edit: it also helps when firing people, as you can make a list of metrics and then make goals that are just out of reach for bottom 50% of performers. Then when you need to fire people and deny unemployment, you point to the metrics they were failing and you have a valid cause to terminate for lack of performance, thus saving you money on unemployment insurance premiums.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#12

Post by mooreds »

Huh. I wonder if all of the folks building and selling these systems have it pointed at themselves (the email monitoring, the webcams)? Or is it just for the common workers?

Just because someone is paying you doesn't give them carte blanche to examine every minute of your time working. That was never explicit before because it was never possible before, but i guess we need to make it explicit now.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#13

Post by PeachPlum »

gadders wrote: post #5

A bank I worked for last year rolled out monitoring software to all their IT staff. It recorded the window title of the application with focus on a regular schedule and kept this in a log somewhere. They said the results would only be used in aggregate, but that was treated with skepticism. Also, the app does pop up with alerts every so often suggesting you take a yoga break so it is adding a lot of value. /Sarcasm

The solution is to provide terminals with only access to work tools.

No-one plays Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till

(cue someone finding a photo of someone playing Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till)

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#14

Post by Fnoord »

I suppose this entire article is about the USA given the first paragraph plus this being part of The Guardian's World section (ie. not local UK).

On which jurisdiction(s) does this apply? Readers (pref lawyers) should check if this is legal in their jurisdiction(s).

For people from NL I can recommend Arnoud Engelfriet's blog (a Dutch lawyer specialised in IT law) [1] and its search feature.

An ontopic example discussing whether an employer is allowed to see private files in a business OneDrive account is discussed [2]. There are many more examples, but the blog is in Dutch and generally applies to Dutch law, so YMMV. I'm curious if similar websites or platforms exist for other jurisdictions.

[1] https://blog.iusmentis.com

[2] https://blog.iusmentis.com/2016/10/17/mag-werkgever-privebes...

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#15

Post by nopacience »

Companys have no need to get into employee home. And employees should not give access to a camera inside their home. Its impossible to know who has access to that camera. The companies can set up an remote environment(remote pc) that employee must connect to in order to work. And that PC the company can connect to and monitor whats being worked on.

If the company can connect to the user computer and install software there, that means the user just opened up his computer to the company. And, if the company software happens to be "buggy" (to say the least) it could mean that company has teorically hacked the employee computer and now has access to every single file on that machine and if it wants it can try to connect to other machines on the same network. If the company software malfunctions, it could delete all the user files or share with others in the internet.

Having said that, its probably important to separate. As a last resource if the company really want to monitor the employee, use 1 internet for company (with 1 computer only for work related) and 1 internet for home usage (and home computers).

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#16

Post by throw2016 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #11
throw2016 wrote: post #8

These kind of tech has always been marketed to enterprises under various ruses. It's persistent. If the company happens to have immature control freaks in decision maker roles then they manage to sell. Ultimately its culture and the decision makers get to decide. Monitoring is of course downwards and those making the decision do not get to be monitored in this intrusive fashion.

Except we’re getting better at quantifying, and the better we are at it, the more we can optimize. Factory workers didn’t use to be measured, but then they were. And now they’re automated. Many aspects of white collar jobs are not impervious to this either. As we move up the chain, we’ll see that even more can be measured and optimized, even for the decision makers. Just make sure you keep climbing! Edit: it also hel…

This is a bit of a straw man. You don't need surveillance technology for this.

If a worker is expected to make 10 pieces of an item per hour its easy for managers to verify this. For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly easy to verify expected performance.

This is not new, workers have been measured for performance everywhere since manufacturing and corporate jobs began.

If we ignore that for a moment, the point you are making applies to management too, yet this tech is guaranteed to not be used for management where things and outcomes are left 'more fuzzy'. Why?

How about we apply it to governance with complete transparency to the electorate. Nope, not going to happen. Because its exploitative and intrusive and will only be applied to the powerless lowest who have no choice.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#17

Post by albertgoeswoof »

Is this article a joke?

"Last year an employee at an IT services company sent a private chat message to a friend at work worried that he had just shared his sexual identity with his manager in a meeting and fearing he’d face career reprisal. Wiretap detected the employee’s concern and alerted a senior company exec who was then able to intervene, talk to the manager and defuse the situation."

What. the. fuck.

thanks "senior exec" for reading my messages, stepping in and "defusing the situation" whatever that means.

it gets worse:

"Or if you usually touch 10 documents a day and print two and suddenly you are touching 500 and printing 200 that may mean you’re stealing documents in preparation of leaving the company."

of course, that's the only possible logical conclusion.

What a waste of time, if I ever saw this in place as an employee or manager I would immediately leave and possibly sue.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#19

Post by albertgoeswoof »

PeachPlum wrote: post #13
gadders wrote: post #5

A bank I worked for last year rolled out monitoring software to all their IT staff. It recorded the window title of the application with focus on a regular schedule and kept this in a log somewhere. They said the results would only be used in aggregate, but that was treated with skepticism. Also, the app does pop up with alerts every so often suggesting you take a yoga break so it is adding a lot of value. /Sarcasm

The solution is to provide terminals with only access to work tools. No-one plays Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till (cue someone finding a photo of someone playing Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till)

The solution is to hire people that care about their job, or at least people who are accountable for their output.

Difficult in a supermarket checkout scenario though.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#20

Post by Create »

Fnoord wrote: post #14

I suppose this entire article is about the USA given the first paragraph plus this being part of The Guardian's World section (ie. not local UK). On which jurisdiction(s) does this apply? Readers (pref lawyers) should check if this is legal in their jurisdiction(s). For people from NL I can recommend Arnoud Engelfriet's blog (a Dutch lawyer specialised in IT law) [1] and its search feature. An ontopic example discuss…

CERN certainly does this for at least a decade, although it has its own "jurisdiction". Management likes it a lot, because it is so easy to abuse.
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