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

Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 312 posts

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#211

Post by HumblyTossed »

bo1024 wrote: post #134
HumblyTossed wrote: post #74

> After two weeks of working from her Brooklyn apartment, a 25-year-old e-commerce worker received a staffwide email from her company: Employees were to install software called Hubstaff immediately on their personal computers so it could track their mouse movements and keyboard strokes,and record the webpages they visited. I'm 100 percent positive that I would tell this company to get stuffed if they suggested I put…

I completely agree, but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle. I hope we can push to level the power imbalance between companies and employees so that privilege is available to more people.

> ... but it's a privilege to be able to risk your job for such a principle.

I absolutely agree that it is.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#212

Post by [deleted] »

subhobroto wrote: post #179
Spivak wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're applying a definition of freedom so absolutely and narrowly that it ceases to be useful. Assault being illegal increases my freedom because I can freely walk down the street without threat of harm. Prohibiting outside doors from being locked in a factory increases my freedom as a worker to leave whenever I choose. And theoretically at an absolute minimum any time you see a prisoners dilemma regulation…

> And theoretically at an absolute minimum any time you see a prisoners dilemma regulation is how you prevent it and make sure that everyone gets their preferred outcome. I can assure you that not everyone is getting their preferred outcome. That's why the term "prisoners" instead of "willing teammates" are used here. > Prohibiting outside doors from being locked in a factory increases my freedom as a worker to leave…

[deleted]

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#213

Post by _curious_ »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #188
_curious_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends, could you elaborate on what you did say because I don't follow. Thanks!

As avicebron said, when a person has had enough of being stomped on they will snap. Most won't drive a truck through a crowd of people, or blow up buildings, but a few will weld themselves into bulldozers* and level buildings, or shoot up schools, or rob banks, or drive through crowds of people. The action doesn't really matter. Destroy every gun in existence? We'll see more knifings and vehicular homicides. Unless e…

Do you feel personally responsible for the actions of other people who have "snapped"?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#214

Post by _curious_ »

evilolive wrote: post #206
_curious_ wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally says: "Rather than download the software on her computer, she opted out." That's all I'm saying, everyone has and makes their own choices about what they will or won't put up with. As to other article subjects , I can't/won't speak for them.

So you can only speak of those who serve your point?

Can you find a person who is not choosing one way or the other?

My point is we all get to choose...and im not saying there are not trade-offs, or its easy, etc. But you, me, those mentioned in this article (and those who will never be notices/mentioned) we all have the power of choice!

Can we agree on that fundamental fact already?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#215

Post by Avicebron »

_curious_ wrote: post #205
Avicebron wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this time I can't tell if you're deliberately misunderstanding reality to virtue signal some sort of privilege? But I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Vulnerable populations can have their employment opportunities gamed by powerful groups where they are essentially enslaved by their reliance on their paycheck to support their family, food, housing, etc. I don't understand why this doesn't register with you.

Thank you for giving me the benefit of doubt...I don't know what "virtue signal some sort of privilege" means? Does that make me dumb? Ignorant? Privileged? It could! "Vulnerable populations can have their employment opportunities gamed by powerful groups where they are essentially enslaved by their reliance on their paycheck to support their family, food, housing, etc. I don't understand why this doesn't register wi…

"virtue signal some sort of privilege" - I'm referring to a particular "let them eat cake" sentiment I'm detecting by your posts. An apt analogy because it was a signal of her misunderstanding of the lower classes food situation.

"vulnerable populations" - people who are unable to quickly and efficiently move either laterally or vertically, in whatever industry they are in, such that they run real risk of losing food or shelter.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#216

Post by mountainboot »

subhobroto wrote: post #179
Spivak wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're applying a definition of freedom so absolutely and narrowly that it ceases to be useful. Assault being illegal increases my freedom because I can freely walk down the street without threat of harm. Prohibiting outside doors from being locked in a factory increases my freedom as a worker to leave whenever I choose. And theoretically at an absolute minimum any time you see a prisoners dilemma regulation…

> And theoretically at an absolute minimum any time you see a prisoners dilemma regulation is how you prevent it and make sure that everyone gets their preferred outcome. I can assure you that not everyone is getting their preferred outcome. That's why the term "prisoners" instead of "willing teammates" are used here. > Prohibiting outside doors from being locked in a factory increases my freedom as a worker to leave…

So we shouldn't have laws against assault because people still die of assault?

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#217

Post by technofiend »

driverdan wrote: post #104
technofiend wrote: post #63

Working for a highly regulated company at least company owned desktop monitoring is BAU. I assume anything I do with company equipment is monitored at all times. And if I forget they remind me every time I log in. When I discovered the company needed to protect their data by pushing on a policy that let them wipe my personal device remotely I respected that and bought a personal device dedicated to the task of readin…

Why would you install anything from an employer on a personal device? If they want you to install their spyware they should buy the hardware.

BYOD is a fact of life these days. I'm not defending the practice but on the other hand I'm not going to quit over it either.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#218

Post by technofiend »

lonelappde wrote: post #146
driverdan wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you install anything from an employer on a personal device? If they want you to install their spyware they should buy the hardware.

Or they can decline to let you connect to the corp net when you are out of office.

Which isn't really an option now that we have mandatory work from home. I'm not going to quit my job because they don't wish to supply me with a laptop.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#219

Post by poulsbohemian »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35
cosmodisk wrote: post #4

It's being done by the same clowns who can't live without time clock cards, all sorts of monitoring,and tracking.These are the people who have no clue how to manage people,how to measure their work and act upon results.These are the same crappy companies who would rather ask their staff to email endless Excel spreadsheets to each other instead of investing some money in database or some crm system. In a nutshell,thes…

Fundamentally it's just an outdated style of doing business. The same people who tell you not to do personal web browsing at work will not respond to an email that arrives in the evening until they clock in the next morning. Whereas sure, I don't spend an eight hour solid block of time working each day, but I'll respond to a help ticket at 11pm because someone had a quick need and my computer is handy. My employer is…

>My employer is still getting my eight hours, possibly more, just diffused through the whole day.

Even that sticks in my craw... we need to make this 8 hour bar die. Some days I'm just not productive. Other days I might be heads-down on a problem for 15+ hours straight. So long as I'm accountable to my work and it is producing the results we've mutually agreed upon, this hour nonsense (for workers not billing by the hour, which is its own separate discussion) needs to go away.

Re: Work-from-home boom leads to more surveillance

#220

Post by RankingMember »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #14

If you want an example of what workplace surveillance software can monitor and capture, watch the following video. It's simply horrible that employees have to put up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA_fJh4lzqQ

Ha, didn't take long for them to turn comments off. I posted a constructive (albeit critical) comment and that's their response. Soon they'll turn off "likes/dislikes".
Post reply on HN