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The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

theguardian.com

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Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#31

Post by lb1lf »

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.

> Monitoring is of course downwards and those making the decision do not get to be monitored in this intrusive fashion.

-Allegedly true story from the DDR (GDR to you anglophones): Once citizens could start asking to see what the former East German state had on them, Erich Mielke (Head of the Stasi/the GDR KGB equivalent) asked to see his file.

Presumably, he figured that someone, somewhere, watched the watchmen.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#32

Post by supermdguy »

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?

I wonder why he/she wants to leave?

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#33

Post by jansho »

tsujamin wrote: post #6

It's only creepy when your employer does it, not when your social media platform does ;)

No what’s creepy is that we’ve got enough surveillance from social media and CCTV, now it’s in our workplace too. That’s most of our day. Sheesh, these people need to get a life

Edit: typo

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#34

Post by pjc50 »

gambiting wrote: post #28
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!

I think this would only be legal in the UK if it was made clear that the communications were subject to monitoring; see https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1066/em... pp58 onwards.

I can see it being argued both ways; transcripts of Bloomberg chat were a key part of the LIBOR scandal, for example. And I can also see there being some need to monitor internal chat in case it's used for unacceptable purposes such as sexual harassment.

Something about the automatedness of a very private situation gives me the creeps, though.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#35

Post by jansho »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #30
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.

Must the 21st century be characterised by paranoia/vigilance? :(

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#36

Post by pjc50 »

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)

How about a chip and pin terminal playing Tetris? https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2006/12/24/chip-pin-term...

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#37

Post by pjc50 »

throw2016 wrote: post #16
lotsofpulp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly easy to verify expected performance.

No it really isn't! Coding performance metrics are a wasteland of failed techniques.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#38

Post by albertgoeswoof »

pjc50 wrote: post #34
gambiting wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I think this would only be legal in the UK if it was made clear that the communications were subject to monitoring; see https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1066/em... pp58 onwards. I can see it being argued both ways; transcripts of Bloomberg chat were a key part of the LIBOR scandal, for example. And I can also see there being some need to monitor internal chat in case it's used for unacceptable pur…

Any communications where the user has an expectation of privacy (this includes company chat programs) should be securely stored (encrypted), and require a court order to access, that goes through normal legal proceedings (e.g. in a criminal or civil case). It should not be legal for a random manager or company to access this data.

The key here is expectation of privacy. If you're posting on a JIRA ticket, you have no expectation of privacy within those with access to the board, nor if you send an email as it can easily be forwarded (although that could be contentious). If you send a message through a DM on slack though, you can expect that to remain private indefinitely.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#39

Post by gambiting »

pjc50 wrote: post #34
gambiting wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I think this would only be legal in the UK if it was made clear that the communications were subject to monitoring; see https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1066/em... pp58 onwards. I can see it being argued both ways; transcripts of Bloomberg chat were a key part of the LIBOR scandal, for example. And I can also see there being some need to monitor internal chat in case it's used for unacceptable pur…

Like, I'm ok with my employer reading my work emails - that's obviously in my contract. But there's something really creepy about automated software that automatically flags messages/actions for review because they are "suspicious". Same with using my webcam to take pictures of me while I work.

Re: The Rise of Workplace Surveillance

#40

Post by Pigo »

ducttape12 wrote: post #27

If an employer feels the need to do this, it's a major red flag that there are serious issues in their culture and management. Monitoring your employees will just make things worse.

My last company started having design sessions to build a system that would monitor how much employees were actively engaged at their desk. I tried to steer them to "rewarding employees who were working hard" goal, but they were only interested in punishing people. It was a real eye opener into the culture that was forming.
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