Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#281

Post by monocasa » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

geddy wrote: post #72

californical wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's standard practice if you agree to it in your employment contract.

Yes but would it always hold up in court? You can give your soul away by installing a piece of software without reading the agreement but it wouldn't hold water, of course. Curious how this would work with federal or state level wiretap laws.

Ehhhh, the supreme court has found that you can sign away rights in a shrink wrap agreement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Mobility_LLC_v._Concepc...

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#282

Post by _82bl » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

notlukesky wrote: post #69

Is there a map of where this is legal and illegal?

Think this is uncharted territory and laws are probably irreconcilably disparate from state to state, from country to country.

In the U.S., it's likely that the most consistently established legal framework revolves around recorded telephone conversations, the one-party consent laws and two-party consent laws, of which some contain mentions and subsets of 'electronic communications.'

"Recording conversations in all 50 states chart" (PDF): https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RECORDING...

Wikipedia has a list of countries with some laws, but, it's a very shy list.

List of two-party consent laws in the U.S. is very short.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#283

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

Frost1x wrote: post #145

CydeWeys wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's your employer's hardware. It's legal for companies to oversee the work their employees are doing.

Activating the camera and/or the microphone remotely without notification, on non-corporate owned premises may be illegal. There are wiretapping laws, etc. Just because I own a microphone and camera doesn't mean I can use it unknowingly in your home. Even if you were to borrow it and willfully bring that camera and microphone into your home, there are reasonable expectations of privacy that can't be violated. If I ex…

Camera/microphone isn't what was being discussed in this conversation thread. The topic at hand was taking screenshots of the desktop.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#284

Post by greedo » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

nepthar wrote: post #274

jlarocco wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but related to this... I had, what I felt, was the best seat in the office at my previous job. We had an open office with short cubicles and standing desks, and the cubicles were arranged so that two people shared a small area with two desks/cabinets/etc. For a while, it was wonderful. My "cube-mate" worked from home 4 days a week and only came in for meetings, and we had a window on one side and an empty…

You know, I've always wondered why there are so many stories about these middle management types who seem to pay so close attention to things that are _not_ employee productivity. I guess on first glance, it may appear that "looking busy" corrates to "getting stuff done", but why not cut out the middle man and pay attention to what the employee actually does?

That requires the middle managers to actually understand the jobs and responsibilities of their staff. For me, this hasn't been the case in over a decade. Since my current boss doesn't really have a technical understanding of what's involved with his teams responsibilities, he instead simply feeds metrics to his boss (also not technical). These metrics range from tickets closed, system uptime, and "automation." I would love to have the Bobs come in and ask him what he actually does here.

It's also important to realize that what middle management wants and what its staff thinks is important usually diverges. Middle management wants to look good, to climb the ladder. Staff generally wants someone to provide guidance, and remove obstacles. If middle management isn't technical, there ends up being a gap.

My favorite is a manager who hired a DevOps admin. This person had never touched Docker, yet after a one week course, was put in charge of our environment. Needless to say, he's made Docker look really bad due to his inexperience. The manager looks good though, because our stodgy company is using Docker.

My second is the manager who was hired to manage our SQL and Oracle team. He has no experience with either database, and was a pity hire by our VP. He's been wonderful.../s

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#285

Post by oneplane » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

californical wrote: post #275

oneplane wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that no contract can override the law, at last not where I live.

But it's not illegal to watch a video of someone with their consent. Whether an employment contract counts as consent or not is an exercise that I'll leave to the reader, but it's definitely a gray area.

You can't consent to things that are not allowed by law. If the law states that you cannot murder people, and someone consents to being murdered, you're still not allowed to murder them and it's still murder.

Murder is an example here, but there are similar laws regarding spying on people, using private information in business and reading someone else's mail. Consent does not override the law.

But to get more specific to your point and the grey area: there is a case where the law permits video surveillance (i.e. in an office) and as a side-effect some footage of a display might be captured. If the display happens to show private content, that is not actionable/admissible anymore. Some countries and laws go as far as to make dashcam recordings inadmissible and even illegal. While impractical in some cases (i.e. if your car gets bumped in to by another car while parked) it's also to prevent a government to "get all recordings of all cars in a street to find a person that might have walked by".

Some laws have exemptions like high security areas where the law explicitly states that if you are not allowed to be there expect for specific purposes, and not allowed to conduct anything there except specific tasks, and you are allowed to record the area to be able to verify it (i.e. nuclear energy plant), then that specific area is off-limits to your private activities/data. But it's not broad enough to allow any company to spy on anyone doing work for them. I suppose that might be different in the US or some US-states.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#286

Post by watwut » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:47 PM UTC

nepthar wrote: post #274

jlarocco wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic, but related to this... I had, what I felt, was the best seat in the office at my previous job. We had an open office with short cubicles and standing desks, and the cubicles were arranged so that two people shared a small area with two desks/cabinets/etc. For a while, it was wonderful. My "cube-mate" worked from home 4 days a week and only came in for meetings, and we had a window on one side and an empty…

You know, I've always wondered why there are so many stories about these middle management types who seem to pay so close attention to things that are _not_ employee productivity. I guess on first glance, it may appear that "looking busy" corrates to "getting stuff done", but why not cut out the middle man and pay attention to what the employee actually does?

My experience with middle management is the one of incompetence and personality that enjoyes little power trips.

I had also good managers, but imo, the way companies are organized currently attracts and promotes leaders that are bad at leading part.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#287

Post by mirimir » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #17

gvjddbnvdrbv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live what he did is a fairly serious criminal offence.

It appears to be standard practice everywhere in corporate America.

It does seem that way. Maybe not screenshots, but very often screen monitoring. And network MitM and logging, of course.

However, many firms provide WiFi APs for visitors and consultants, and employees can use them for their personal devices. So there's no need for anything personal to touch a business device.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#288

Post by ianai » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:51 PM UTC

dharmab wrote: post #163

ianai wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be standard practice everywhere in corporate America.

Screenshots are not standard practice- in fact, since they're a great way to leak secrets being displayed on screen (passwords, confidential information), that's probably the opposite of standard practice. Standard practice is monitoring emails, chat, web traffic and so on.

You call it screenshots I call it vnc/rdp etc. see the rest of the discussion for how companies get away with it.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#289

Post by mc32 » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #268

jdbernard wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best and most effective way I've found to do this is to have a door that you can lock and a partner who can reassure the kids that dad/mom still cares but is just busy when the door is locked. Of course, people who were not already setup for working remotely may not have a door they can lock and partner who can reassure.

Sure, now what about when both parents are attempting to work from home. It takes a lot more effort to coordinate when both parents need to be on a conference call to attempt to wrangle the kids away/keep quiet enough for the other to make that call. Kids have routines, and having work-from-home parents can become part of that routine. It's not a light switch though, so training has to be given time to take hold. Pro…

When both parents work, it’s going to take a toll on productivity. One of the other or both parents will have to deal with all kinds of issues with small children up to maybe tweens. But even then unless they had home office setups there will be competition for space and resources —kids could be hogging the b/w and if you throttle it, whoever gets throttled is going to be unhappy with their telework or distance learning.

Re: Bosses panic-buy spy software to keep tabs on remote workers

#290

Post by ProZsolt » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #44

spamizbad wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised cubicles get so much hate. I loved mine at my first job. Oodles of desk space. Locking drawers and cabinets. There was a chair in the corner so a guest could sit. Made it easy to have 2 meetings without disturbing people. less aesthetically pleasing in office photographs, but overall a much better work environment than any open plan I've experienced.

I think it depends on the nature of your job. If you regularly need to interact verbally with colleagues, cubes are kind of a pain. I forget where I saw this but there was a company that had set up what were basically "team offices" so teams that worked closely together each had their own closed room where they worked, so they could collaborate in their own manner. Quiet when they needed it, loud when they needed it,…

My past office was just like that. 10-20 people per room, but usually less than that because people worked from home. Sometimes more than one team per room, because there where smaller teams. My room had 3 teams but we worked in a similar area, so we could bounce ideas with other team members.

It's not a good middle, it's the best possible way to work.