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Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

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131–140 of 180 posts

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these seem actionable to me. What are you trying to prevent that a camera would stop? If the basement is visibly flooding then it is flooded . If someone is on camera entering your home then they are in it . What are you going to do about it at that point that you wouldn't be able to do about it the next morning or whatever? Insurance doesn't require camera footage and realistically the most likely outcome of…

Yes, some may be un-actionable, but there are actions I could take on others (e.g. flooding is not equal to flooded in my situation). Whether they are worth it is still not clear to me. As my kids a getting older it is not so important to monitor them without special circumstances. I do fail to see where wealth has anything to do with this though. Edit: Moved edit to reply that was not an option before.

ok. I'm not trying to be hostile I only brought this up because you mentioned concerns with privacy and what your children are learning to tolerate and accept re: surveillance.

We feel safer with cameras but in practice there are few cases where we truly are. I think what the kids are likely to learn from this is that an authority's sense of security is a more powerful demand than their own need for privacy, something with, to me, pretty direct connections to the overall worker-surveillance conversation. I'm not judging you for having cameras or even specifically recommending you don't, just agreeing that your fears are justified and they may not be, probably aren't, worth it.

TBH I'm not sure what the wealth link is either! But I was poor/working class most of my life, and am high income now, and have friends in both groups. I just do not see cameras in the homes of people who are not affluent, except sometimes camera-enabled baby monitors. It may just be a matter of access but they aren't all that expensive so I'm not satisfied by that explanation.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#132

Quoted post unavailable.

You strike me as someone who is at least right on the cusp of breaking through to understand what is really going on, however, if not, I encourage you to reconsider the assumptions and motivations of all the labels and affiliations of organizations and people and social strata you were likely also “taught” about all your life, mostly through “history”. It is an odd thing that many, if not most humans assume good faith/intentions even in the light of the starkest and most overpowering mountain of evidence. I guess not much in the universe is more powerful than the human capacity to deny having been fooled. Cue Mark Twain quote here.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#133
post #65

I recently had to install chrom'ium' on my work pc, because all the mainstream browsers were auto installing an un-removable tracking extension via some domain policy :(. I'm sure my manager gets some report at the end of the month detailing how many hours I had a news.ycombinator.com tab open

Same here. It’s touted as a security add on but it also just happens to do lots and lots of tracking and reports for management

There are portable versions of browsers that you don't need to install and work just out of any folder.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#134

I worked at a place once where we got a memo that asked everyone to stop clipping nails and farting because the microphones installed in our desks were picking these noises up. The memo even added that if you need to fart please go to the bathroom. It wasn't a joke email, they were serious. Oh, also not many people realize this but CCTV cameras all have the capability to convey audio captured via an internal micropho…

One of the greatest benefits of working from home - which is seldom celebrated - is the ability to fart at one’s leisure without having to try silence it.

Or have that video conference call from your bathroom.. as long as you're on mute.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#135
post #107

I recently had a manager insist that I install some MDM-like software on my laptop so that it could be tracked and managed remotely. I said, "okay I'll do that, but then I'm never going to put that laptop on my home network, or use it on any network I may frequent outside of the office, so I'll just leave my laptop on my work desk instead". The point, of course, is the same reasoning behind IT policies that don't let…

Yup, "That's creepy as fuck mate" was all it took to dissuade a former manager from rigging the ceiling up with cameras for whatever he was looking at doing

Sometimes resistance is not futile

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a lawyer, but that sounds like such a violation of wiretapping laws. I don’t know of any zero-party consent laws for audio.

It's not all bad, though. Sometimes it's used for good like the gunshot direction detection mics.

[deleted]

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#137
post #75

Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too? >Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression. Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll…

Where's the software letting me surveil my supervisors? They're supposed to be spending some time and effort on me, so I have a legitimate need to make sure that's happening. There should be software that scans their emails and chat for discussions about open positions, projects, or trainings that are a good fit for me. Then it'll let me know if they recommended me, or mentioned my name in a negative context. Of cour…

At an ex-job, shortly after I quit they got a new middle-level manager. The new boss started complaining to everyone about every time he saw them arriving to the office late, so the guys collaborated on a spreadsheet to track the boss's work hours to the minute, every single day.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#138

I worked at a place once where we got a memo that asked everyone to stop clipping nails and farting because the microphones installed in our desks were picking these noises up. The memo even added that if you need to fart please go to the bathroom. It wasn't a joke email, they were serious. Oh, also not many people realize this but CCTV cameras all have the capability to convey audio captured via an internal micropho…

Work in construction, up to the minute they install the cameras.

I would say open offices are bull pens, not offices. Offices have walls, doors, and one person capacity.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#139
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not all bad, though. Sometimes it's used for good like the gunshot direction detection mics.

Most indoor gunshot detection systems use dedicated hardware, with the microphone going into an on-board audio analysis circuit. They generally cannot be used for ambient listening.

Yeah totally different sound profile, a gunshot versus a whisper. And they were designed with that in mind, materially helping police without full-on police state.

But like a lot of the time nobody goes, nobody cares. Depends on the murder...who and where, and like the budget, if the budget just got slashed...

Tangent. So that's when the apathy inescapably sets in for police departments susceptible to it, when they want nothing more than do their jobs but just can't get the resources to actually do their jobs. Have to be more selective, do something similar to doing their jobs but not as expensive. Pretend to do it, answer the phone but get victims off the phone unless the case is stereotypical, bounce people to a different state service. Or recently when I was pressing charges for being assaulted here in Santiago, first assault I actually had minor wounds in so first time I could press charges. Fought back obviously, fight back every time.

So the printer was low on toner, and my form looked blurry and shitty. Still legible though, just a legal document of inferior worth, as evidence for instance or as collateral for picking up on the case later, because of low production values. I told him a company would have a little closet stocked up with more toner things--all office supplies--so they could print all the forms they needed to print. The policeman said "yeah that's how it should be, that's the dream."

Like it was a fantasy to the extent he couldn't articulate what ought to be done about it. In the meantime, they do what the can. But they can't do what they can't do.

Another example was a rock I picked up after a riot, like 12 ounces, weighed as much as a hammer, obviously for stoning people. Picked it up at 22:16 hour when things cooled down and the show's over. Obviously the intention was to kill policemen. Brain damage. You could tell from the weight, and actually it was too heavy for its purpose, it's like a shot put, evidently malicious. And it had no business where I found it, piece of concrete specifically chiseled in order to stone people with. I got stoned in March, the stoners were aiming for police on motorcycles. Didn't get hit, but the intention was there, I was considered pro-police.

And in fact I am pro-police, pro-carabinero, so going back to that rock, I told a policeman I collected it, wanted to present it to them so they could do detective work. It was evidence of something. At the very least I got it off the street, apart from it there's no rocks there it was conspicuous. I don't know whether to post a photograph, I wish the police photographed it, did good old-fashioned detective work on who made it, with what type of chuzo (like a pick), whatever. The policeman (carabinero) said yeah...you know we're uh not the right station for forensics, you'd have to take it to another...Which other I asked...no another one. And for him I have no blame, absolutely none. These men and women are completely overwhelmed. I talked to them about it right after the assault, said "yeah everyone's insulting you, the screams, the graffiti, they say..." then struggling at how to express what I was talking about without actually spelling it out. I then saw a graffiti of what I was referring to on the wall across the street and said "There it is! You can read it for yourself!" Like people think it's so funny to insult the people who protect them. Haha, great joke, classic.

Same in California, so so many activists undermining them, like they can hardly do anything else for the benefit of society other than emasculating police. Any chance they undermine a gangster? Take a picture of a crime in progress but of the criminal, not the cops making the arrest but the actual assault or burglary or robbery?

So back to that assault, it was the stupidest shit, if the assaulter had been in a green uniform forty of the hundred witnesses would have filmed him swing at me, but because instead he took his shirt off as an escalation and obviously was not police, talked very shitty as part of the intimidation like making a show of how uneducated he was by his own volition, and made death threats like an ipso facto criminal, the witnesses respected him more, then yeah they were afraid of him. And nobody filmed it.

I looked for film evidence, photography even, nothing. Everyone was out of battery. It was a super drawn-out conflict, with like five escalations to which I didn't back down, before the punches and kicks. Like three bouts. It was a good clean fight, but oh well, I guess everyone had Apple iPhone 5S's like me whose batteries crap out weirdly, evidently not truly random.

Two witnesses though, and I thank them. A third witness wimped out on testifying.

Like he wanted best of both worlds, you see, protection from police (and men like me who fight back) against criminals, but at the same time bother criminals the least so they can be their favorite or least bullied. Suck up to criminals. That's the attitude. That's what's up.

Re: Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a lawyer, but that sounds like such a violation of wiretapping laws. I don’t know of any zero-party consent laws for audio.

It's not all bad, though. Sometimes it's used for good like the gunshot direction detection mics.

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