Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

privacyinternational.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 367 posts

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#151

Post by SoftTalker »

jupp0r wrote: post #75
mantas wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universal income covering the very basic would still keep people making beyond minimum wage vulnerable. Paying meaningful money would be too expensive at scale. Then few jobs could pay meaningfully more than the universal income. Why work if you get +/- not working?

Your understanding of universal income is broken. Everybody receives a monthly income, regardless of them working or not. The incentive to earn more by working is always there.

Not if employers are taxed so much to fund UBI that they hire fewer workers. The ability to work and earn more is contingent upon enough jobs existing.

What would really happen is they would raise their prices to earn the amount of profit they deem necessary to be worth the trouble of being in business. Everything gets more expensive, and the UBI payments won't be enough to live on.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#152

Post by qwytw »

gchamonlive wrote: post #139
qwytw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI would, and should, replace current welfare schemes. We already have those in place. But that would still require a huge amount of additional money if you want UBI to be above subsistence levels. Otherwise the amount received by current welfare recipients would have to be cut several times. Also what about disabled people and others who can't work? Would they get the same amount as everyone?

I don't really understand the subject too deeply, just enough to have me convinced UBI should be implemented in some form, but I think the fundamental assumption is that everything that the government has to provide, it is going to do so, by no fault of the government itself, in a very inefficient way. So by the mere act of UBI replacing many systems and centralising in a single program many forms of wealth redistrib…

> it is going to do so, by no fault of the government itself, in a very inefficient way

Whose fault is it then? I mean if we agree that some governments/organizations are more efficient than others who else could we blame?

>UBI replacing many systems

For instance the British government spends about £2500 per capita on welfare. Even if admin etc. would cost nothing £200 per month is not exactly an amount which would allow you to not work, meaning people who can't actually work would starve/freeze/etc. to death without any additional support from the government or somebody else.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#153

Post by kornhole »

I have known about this for a long time and make inconvenient efforts to avoid O365 as much as possible. I do all my writing in other apps such as notepad++ and then paste into Outlook or other app when finished. I use my own Nextcloud server for meetings and other activities. I use Brave browser with VPN extension. If they are not key logging me, it might look like I am not doing much. Nobody has asked me anything yet.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#154

Post by suddenclarity »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #20

Nearly 20 years ago we used to install monitoring software to tell if a user's mouse or keyboard hadn't been used in a while. More and more places use traffic inspection "for security". Desks now use sensors to tell when warm bodies are near. Doesn't matter whether you're working from office or in the home, surveillance is here to stay. Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished. Bad businesses…

> Good businesses should only care if work is getting accomplished.

This always comes across as people wanting to have the cake and eat it. Employers should only care that the work is getting done, but if the work isn't done, then the employee should still be able to go home after 8 hours and get full salary?

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#155

Post by wkat4242 »

jupp0r wrote: post #70
geek_at wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surveillance is here to stay in the United States. Europe has very strict rules about surveiling employees. Example: In Austria we are not allowed to use some of the functions that Azure-AD joined computers would be capable of because employers _might_ push remote control software the user hasn't agreed to

Germany famously just passed legislation that forces employers to record working hours for all employees.

Spain too, unfortunately

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#157

Post by [deleted] »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #133
lannisterstark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some people don’t want to work. They’ve told me so ...and? That's fine. there will always be some people who do not want to work. a UBI guarantees somewhat basic level of living conditions at least.

[deleted] I failed to consider the audience.

[deleted]

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#158

Post by SapporoChris »

"Global demand for employee monitoring software increased by 108% in April, and 70% in May 2020 compared with searches carried out the preceding year."

Wait a moment. What was the install base of monitoring software in April/May 2019/2020? We don't know from this article. This article is only referencing an article https://www.zdnet.com/article/employee-surveillance-software... referencing another article https://www.top10vpn.com/research/covid-employee-surveillanc... that was only monitoring internet searches.

I would like to propose that in this situation searching for monitoring software in no way equates to utilizing monitoring software.

Let's just look at one of the companies mentioned in the article. Hubstaff customers up 25%, net revenue up 55%. https://blog.hubstaff.com/year-in-review/

Surveillance is of concern but I think the article is very misleading and very overhyped.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#159

Post by cornercasechase »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #133
lannisterstark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some people don’t want to work. They’ve told me so ...and? That's fine. there will always be some people who do not want to work. a UBI guarantees somewhat basic level of living conditions at least.

[deleted] I failed to consider the audience.

> Perhaps we could make paying for such people voluntary?

I’d like to opt out of paying for war but sadly I can’t. My tax dollars going to help people instead of kill and oppress them seems like a huge upgrade.

Re: WFH – Watched from Home: Office 365 and workplace surveillance creep (2022)

#160

Post by mynameishere »

vihren wrote: post #104
wizofaus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can accuse UBI of many things but unfair it is clearly not, hence the "universal". Everyone gets the same amount - but the assumption is most will then choose to work and earn extra income on top of that.

How is it fair? You do give the same amount to everyone, but you do not take the same from everyone - you have to take more from those who chose to work. Hence the unfair part.

It's fair to the extent that anyone can drop out and have the remaining workers pay for their livelihood. As more people do this, the more rational it becomes, and the closer to economic collapse we get.
Post reply on HN