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The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

theguardian.com

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Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#21

Post by colejohnson66 »

mooreds wrote: post #12

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.

It’s almost certainly not being used by the creators. It’s the same thing as politicians; It doesn’t affect me, and it sounds like a good idea on paper, so go for it.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#22

Post by w458cmau »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #17

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 "…

I lost it at "[...] when an All State Insurance franchise did a live demonstration of Interguard’s software to other dealers. The technology started scanning the network and almost immediately found an email with the words “client list” and “résumé”. The demonstrator opened the email in front of a room full of peers to discover his best employee was plotting to move to another company."

What is wrong with people?

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#23

Post by gadders »

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)

By IT Staff, I mean (for example) developers writing risk management and trading systems, as well as support and infrastructure staff.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#24

Post by chewbacha »

This makes work a panopticon prison.

> The concept of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#25

Post by falcolas »

w458cmau wrote: post #22
albertgoeswoof wrote: post #17

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 "…

I lost it at "[...] when an All State Insurance franchise did a live demonstration of Interguard’s software to other dealers. The technology started scanning the network and almost immediately found an email with the words “client list” and “résumé”. The demonstrator opened the email in front of a room full of peers to discover his best employee was plotting to move to another company." What is wrong with people?

When you optimize for profit at any cost as a company, that kind of mindset carries over into you employee/leadership culture.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#26

Post by MisterTea »

chewbacha wrote: post #24

This makes work a panopticon prison. > The concept of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

This is is automated, real time, omnipresent surveillance of everyone.

It's worse than a panopticon as in a panopticon prison you have one person surveilling 1000 for example but only able to watch one at a time. The idea is the prisoners never know who is being watched so in theory they all behave thinking they are all being watched. But math kinda destroys that theory as they each have at least a 1000:1 chance of being watched so the odds are in the prisoner's favor.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#28

Post by gambiting »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #17

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 "…

I feel like this is a part of UK's ongoing effort to make ubiquitous surveillance a completely normal thing and have the citizens accept it as such. It's not creepy and disturbing, it's actually normal and should be celebrated!

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#30

Post by nathanaldensr »

jansho wrote: post #29

Now that surveillance is getting cleverer, the question is, how do we know if we’re being monitored? How can we tell which companies practice surveillance?

It's a chilling effect. Because you probably can't detect who's monitoring you, you must assume all companies do--potentially even the ones that say they don't.
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