Guide to Slack import and export tools • Hacker News Board

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#491

Post by UncleMeat » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

iamleppert wrote: post #341

Part of the reason why Slack has been so successful vs. other corporate messaging solutions is that it encourages employees to bring their “whole self” to work. It’s perhaps the most important thing at work to feel like you can communicate easily and without fear of reprisal from managers and in my opinion had a lot to do with my extensive use of Slack. It felt like, for the first time, the communications platform wa…

> It’s perhaps the most important thing at work to feel like you can communicate easily and without fear of reprisal from managers and in my opinion had a lot to do with my extensive use of Slack.

This is a problem with your management, not with Slack. If your managers are abusing such a tool to read everything you write then you have much much bigger problems.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#492

Post by lmkg » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #481

criley2 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before tech, witness testimony was the same thing. Old boys club keeps it "verbal only", but someone blows the whistle and testifies regarding the conversation. Technology didn't change anything. You can't have a private conversation at work. Period end of story. If you manage to conceal your communications, not only could you be violating laws (depending on your industry and relevant regulations) but you're likely v…

> You can't have a private conversation at work. I was talking about discretion, not privacy. Those are two different things. Discretion is controlled sharing of thoughts, ideas, and information. Marking documents "trade secret" is an example of discretion. Trade secrets are not private information. I'm not arguing that information should be unavailable when a warrant or subpoena requires disclosure. I'm arguing that…

> Trade secrets are not private information.

Trade Secrets are a form of intellectual property. They have legal protections, and disclosing them without permission can have legal consequences.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#493

Post by Piskvorrr » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

isatty wrote: post #450

Piskvorrr wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then of course, if the hardware is provided by the employer...the Second and Third Rule is already broken, game over.

Are there any guides to check for shady SSL certificate shenanigans on an employer provided Mac?

If the employer had physical access, what would prevent them installing a rootkit? Then you couldn't detect a fake certificate no matter what you tried. Or deeper, if you distrust the provided software, what makes you trust the hardware? It's turtles all the way down ;)

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#494

Post by hjnilsson » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

wrs wrote: post #424

hjnilsson wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How fine-grained is the tool? Do you select a channel and export only the contents of that? Can you select only two users and only get messages between them? Or is it blunt and you simple download all data (the text makes it seem that way)? I ask, because if it's the latter it borders on illegal to click on that button (and get ALL private conversations), at the very least it needs to be heavily regulated within the…

It is incredibly blunt, at least for compliance exports — all you can do is export the whole workspace — and once exported it's just a ZIP of thousands of JSON files. There is no tool to look at it with. When I had to do an export I found a PHP script somebody had written to turn the JSON into thousands of HTML files, but otherwise it was grep and jq.

That sounds less promising, I had hoped you could select a single channel and export it. Or even better give permission to a user to be able to export one channel. We often have Slack channels shared with clients etc. and they have asked before to get a transcript of chats for reference. If you had fine-grained control, you could give that access to the project manager for the client in question, without having to share the access / have a central moderator handle all requests.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#495

Post by sundvor » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:09 PM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #274

I'm always surprised by the amount of DMs people send in Slack. I've worked in 2 companies using Slack and, in both, about 80% of the total messages were DMs. It seems crazy high to me. I wonder if people just send all day private stuff unrelated to work, or if people have trouble with trust and transparence on the workspace..

Perhaps people don't feel like spamming a number of people with a conversation that only needs two participants.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#496

Post by always_good » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

colemorrison wrote: post #129

Wow. Ya know, for every case this might "help" solve (workplace harassment and the like), I just can't help but say ultimately it will hurt far more. "But employers/managers/execs will operate more responsibly with more data about their employees!" Will they really? I think they'll be able to operate more "powerfully" with respect to controlling employees... but with that power I wouldn't be surprised if the abuse ou…

If this is what finally makes you behave appropriately on work comms and start communicating out of band, then they are doing your future a favor. It should have been common sense.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#497

Post by enzo1982 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #430

enzo1982 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that an employee's communication may not be monitored without prior notice and without specific reasons. [1] [1] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-m...

Wherever you work in the USA there's a note in the employee handbook saying that the company may monitor any communications using company equipment for any business purpose, which is completely consistent with that ruling (and, even if it applied in the us, would render it moot).

No, "we may monitor your communication for any business purpose" would not be consistent with that ruling. There's no chance "any business purpose" would qualify as a legitimate reason for monitoring communications.

From the PDF press release linked on the COE site:

"The national courts [have not] carried out a sufficient assessment of whether there had been legitimate reasons to justify monitoring Mr Bărbulescu’s ommunications."

"Neither of the national courts had sufficiently examined whether the aim pursued by the employer could have been achieved by less intrusive methods than accessing the contents of Mr Bărbulescu’s communications."

In other words: You need a legitimate reason for accessing your employees' communication and you need to consider less intrusive ways of achieving your aim first.

So your boss is not allowed to just read your mail whenever he likes. Or maybe he is, if you're working in the US. But European courts, especially the international ones, are very strict about privacy and protecting personal rights.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#498

Post by isatty » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:44 PM UTC

Why was the title of this submission changed?

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#499

Post by ravitation » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #276

ravitation wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way are companies not trivially compared to states (governments) in this context (surveillance)? You're being intellectually disingenuous. I mean, you completely (amusingly) misquoted that sentence. I said "it isn't hard to argue that [...]". I did not make an absolute statement that it is (a violation)... Come on now.

> You're being intellectually disingenuous. Okay...let me see if I understand you correctly. You're defending the other commenter's description of corporate logs as totalitarian surveillance , but you're saying that I'm being intellectually disingenuous because I'm pointing out that companies are not governments?

No, I'm calling you intellectually disingenuous for reading a comment about internal corporate surveillance, and choosing to pontificate on word choice when the meaning is trivial to understand. Blatantly misquoting me also doesn't help.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#500

Post by isatty » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

MarcScott wrote: post #416

IMHO I don't think this is a fair title change. What is important here is the fact that access to DMs have changed. Not that the general import/export tools have changed. If Google changed their TOS to suddenly make everyone's search history public, would the title read "Google changes TOS"?

Yes, especially because I read the comments when the title was more accurate and came back thinking this was a new submission.

This is a completely irrelevant title.