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Guide to Slack import and export tools

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Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#351

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

ravitation wrote: post #211
dsacco wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? Sigh Totalitarianism is a socio-political paradigm, not a stand-in word to describe things you think constitute surveillance in the context of a business. Companies require the capability to maintain auditable records of employee activity on the information channels they own and manage. Your company is not recordi…

> socio-political paradigm Sigh. And workplaces are socio-political contexts... I didn't find it very difficult to get past his hyperbole, and I frankly find it hard to believe that you did. It isn't hard to argue that monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights - regardless of the fact that you…

Generally speaking it’s easy to argue that employees have no expectation of privacy on the work network for the following reasons:

1. Regulation in most countries requires it to be this way, we’ll most countries any of us is likely to work in. Which is to say: The Law Hath Spoken, which is to say: The People Hath Decided.

2. The employer should have spelled this out to you at time of hire, and had you sign a document to verify you understand.

The problem here isn’t that the direct messages take place in the workplace, it’s that they take place on infrastructure owned by the workplace.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#352

Post by shawnz »

guitarbill wrote: post #204
pera wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If harassers, as you have mentioned, can simply switch to another channel, then what problem exactly is this measure trying to solve? I'm honestly confused.

Ass-covering. It should've been obvious as soon as HR was mentioned that this isn't about helping employees, harassed or not.

Before this change, would the company have been liable for harassing DMs on Slack, an unaffiliated service where they previously were not able to read peoples DMs?

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#353

Post by apendleton »

dsacco wrote: post #231
afastow wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is the material difference between having employees save DM logs in an auditable, authenticated way and being able to view employee DMs? > When you are reviewing an auditable log of information related to an employee, you don't necessarily want to have to ask the employee for that information, nor do you necessarily want them to know you're reviewing it. You just answered your own question. You might not want…

> You might not want them to know you're reviewing it but they most certainly do want to know that you are. Of course they want to know. Everyone wants to know. But if they committed a crime, or at least are complicit in a lawsuit the company is facing, their desire for privacy on an information channel they don't own is irrelevant. I don't understand why this is controversial. When the SEC, FBI, local police, opposi…

Then Slack should (and indeed, does) have special processes for handing over private conversations when served with a warrant, subpoena, court order, etc. "The FBI should be able to do it with probably cause" and "your employer should be able to do it whenever they feel like" are radically different.

And I don't disagree that the company owns it and should have the right to do whatever they want with the things they own. But the employees should also have the right to think that's shitty, and companies should have the ability to demonstrate their lack of shittiness to their employees by configuring their environment in such a way that a higher barrier exists to snooping. This change doesn't actually make a new thing possible; Slack had a "compliance mode" before that companies could opt into, but it wasn't the default, and users were notified if it was enabled. This change just limits companies abilities not to have snoop mode turned on.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#354

Post by protomyth »

peterkelly wrote: post #326
protomyth wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees Abusing your privileged access?!? You do realize some of us are required to access those communications for a variety of reasons especially because a threat is happening? Also, I don't get a choice when the lawyer shows up and says we need to look at X's accou…

> The communication systems you use as an employee are not yours. Yes they are. I work as a contractor, remotely, using my own personal equipment, my own personal email account, and either my home internet connection or that of whatever coffee shop or co-working space I happen to be in on any given day. My clients are all located in other cities and countries and lack a physical presence where I live. I've never had…

Should I be required to divulge the trade secrets or intellectual property of one client to another to satisfy a corporate IT policy? And if I have a personal conversation with someone, which client(s) should I share that with?

Contractors are always in an odd position, but its pretty logical and a lot easier these days. If I was a contractor again, I would probably put my communications and project files on VM of their own[1]. You should have a procedure to clearly separate your time, communications, and work product for each client. If you are using your company e-mail then separation is well understood by lawyers. I would make sure to have separate Slack accounts per client.

1) This assumes I am not assigned a PC and accounts by the employer because its a staffing position instead of a work product arrangement.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#355

Post by ianmiers »

zifnab06 wrote: post #127
Arubis wrote: post #78

For companies, yeah, this makes sense. It was nice when this wasn't true, but never really expected nor required. Unfortunately, Slack also gets used for a lot of OSS communities. Arguably this was already a poor fit, but now it's even more obviously a mismatched relationship; it's unclear whether one could just start paying for a Slack account and immediately pull all DM history for something that didn't come with t…

Rocket Chat is something I've been looking into. It's...well pretty amazing so far. Open source, self hosted, bridges to slack fairly reasonably, and gives IRC style permissions. Slightly nicer for the "I'm not always logged in"/"We need a log bot" issues IRC has had.

If it's self hosted, then DMs cannot be private from the company/organization since they literally have root on the box.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#356

Post by tootie »

There's actually a Slack competitor called Symphony that exists solely because it allows thorough auditing/monitoring/spying on all communications. It's ugly and is missing a ton of features. It's used by a bunch of financial services firms that have a lot of compliance rules they can't enforce with Slack. This move is probably to start getting Slack into that space.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#357

Post by mulmen »

The surprising thing to me is that this was not already a feature of Slack. Isn’t the ability to view employee communication a very basic requirement of corporate communication platforms? Does anyone have an expectation of privacy on any corporate infrastructure? I certainly never have.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#358

Post by wolco »

Cacti wrote: post #283
vijayagrawal18 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it show up in slack of receiver?? If receiver has issues, he/she can show his/her slack to get the investigation started.

And what if the issue is two employees are using Slack to discuss using a competitors proprietary information on a contract proposal? Or two employees are discussing how to arrange the books so that they don't receive margin calls while trying to hide large trading losses? You can't depend on everyone being on the up and up.

Hopefully they would choose there own phones to arrange a corporate takeover.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#359

Post by enzo1982 »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #265
enzo1982 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany (and probably the whole EU) it's illegal for an employer to read an employee's mails without approval of the workers' council for each individual case.

"probably the whole EU" [citation-needed]. German privacy law is very strict. This might be a good thing, don't get me wrong - but extrapolating this to all the other 27 member states is pure nonsense.

Requiring approval of the worker's council is how an employer's demand to read an employee's mail is usually handled in Germany. I did not mean to imply that it is handled the same way in the whole EU, just that unsubstantiated monitoring is likely illegal in the whole EU.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#360

Post by mejari »

wcunning wrote: post #325
Cacti wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if the issue is two employees are using Slack to discuss using a competitors proprietary information on a contract proposal? Or two employees are discussing how to arrange the books so that they don't receive margin calls while trying to hide large trading losses? You can't depend on everyone being on the up and up.

Replace "are using Slack" with "discussing at the bar across the street from the office" and what changes about the situation? If the company has an obligation to look into something, they have to look into it. They don't necessarily (and in my opinion shouldn't ever) have the need to, say, record audio of everything you ever do. What does the gray-er area of conversation in the break room at the office look like? Wh…

>Replace "are using Slack" with "discussing at the bar across the street from the office" and what changes about the situation?

That the conversation is no longer happening over a company-sanctioned and controlled communications system? Seems like a pretty clear difference.

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