Guide to Slack import and export tools • Hacker News Board

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#311

Post by vidarh » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #141

s3nnyy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Compare that to our email, where I can go into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons." Wow, THAT is highly illegal in Europe.

I was under the impression it WAS legal in Europe as well after being litigated to the Court of Human Rights[1]. The requirement is simply that they inform you ahead of time that they can (and will) monitor your email. In the US there is usually a form you sign at your hiring that says you understand the company may monitor your email. It is couched in terms like "to ensure compliance with laws and company policy" bu…

Note that the ECHR has jurisdiction over the European Convention on Human Rights, which is attached to the Council of Europe, which is a pan-European organization that provides the "lower end" of protection in Europe. Even Russia is a member of the COE.

The EU, on top of requiring COE/ECHR membership provides additional protections under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The highest court for EU law is the European Court of Justice, not the ECHR.

Then on top of that, a number of EU/EEA countries have much stricter rules, some are outlined in the article.

So it's technically right in that it is legal in signatories to the ECHR provided they are not covered by other, stricter rules via one of the other routes, and many are.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#312

Post by martimarkov » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:53 PM UTC

Cacti wrote: post #283

vijayagrawal18 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it show up in slack of receiver?? If receiver has issues, he/she can show his/her slack to get the investigation started.

And what if the issue is two employees are using Slack to discuss using a competitors proprietary information on a contract proposal? Or two employees are discussing how to arrange the books so that they don't receive margin calls while trying to hide large trading losses? You can't depend on everyone being on the up and up.

Do you think you will go over every single DM to see if your employees are doing this? That's insane amount of time wasted. How do you think you will capture all of that? AI? Good luck. We had a system in my previous job that highlighted conversations which had keywords and we just abused it by mentioning those keywords constanly in "relevant" contexts. And if you really wanted to get the password (one of the monitored keywords) you'd just say: "Can you give me the details for ..."

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#313

Post by enzo1982 » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

Piskvorrr wrote: post #265

enzo1982 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany (and probably the whole EU) it's illegal for an employer to read an employee's mails without approval of the workers' council for each individual case.

"probably the whole EU" [citation-needed]. German privacy law is very strict. This might be a good thing, don't get me wrong - but extrapolating this to all the other 27 member states is pure nonsense.

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]

This ruling applies not only to the whole EU, but to the 47 member states of the Council of European, including for example Russia and Turkey.

[1] https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-m...

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#314

Post by dspillett » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #194

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

If two people want to have a private conversation, they'll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.

> If two people want to have a private conversation

You response is based on a false fact: that anything you use official company communication channels for should be considered private.

HR functions can and will access such communication to investigate complaints about behaviour and similar. Compliance and legal functions can and will access such communication to investigate complaints relevant to them. They can, will, and often must provide access to such communication to relevant external bodies (legal authorities, regulators) under some circumstances too. Heck, in some regulated environments compliance functions are required not just to view your communications for specific reasons but to actively monitor them for certain activity (if they fail to do so they could be liable for punishments for a due diligence failing). For instance our email is monitored to block distribution of client data, accidental or otherwise.

If you want a private conversation, use a truly private channel not an employer provided/related one.

> they'll just find another means by which to do it

The fact that people will find away around rules, restrictions, and monitoring, is not a good reason for not implementing such rules, restrictions, and monitoring in the first place.

If the private conversation is in no way a problem then, well, there isn't a problem.

If it is something that would cause the participants trouble if performed over an official channel then when/if the matter does come to light it shows malice of forethought and planning (i.e. that the participants knew they were in the wrong and took specific action to hide their behaviour rather than correct it).

> I would quit a job

In many (most?) industries you would not even get a job without explicitly agreeing to the fact that your communications using employer provided/related services can be accessed by some functions of the organisation and distributed to external authorities, so you would not be in a position to need to quit.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#315

Post by jiveturkey » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #121

random4369 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an infinite space of solutions to your particular problem, but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy. Bullies are pretty adept at functioning in these environments. Instead of harassing on monitored DMs, they'll mak…

Totalitarian surveilance? While you’re at removing that from the workplace don’t forget to instigate democratic revolution in your company as well.

Well, if you work at Google anyway.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#316

Post by Skunkleton » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #194

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

If two people want to have a private conversation, they'll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.

> If two people want to have a private conversation,

Emphasis is mine. If one person can have a private conversation with an unwilling participant, that is entirely different. I have worked in places with heavy logging requirements, and for sure we created ways to have private conversations. The point is that everyone in these private chats was a willing participant, and could leave if they wanted.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#317

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

I had assumed they already did this.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#318

Post by hennsen » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

peterkelly wrote: post #194

tvanantwerp wrote: post #13

As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY. Don't get me wrong--it's not like I want to read your messages and very likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern acc…

If two people want to have a private conversation, they'll just find another means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.

Sure, but then the communication doesn’t happen in the space where your boss is partially responsible for what's happening there.

It’s very simple: use your employers tools and networks only for business stuff, do personal stuff unrelated to work in your own networks and software...

Besides that, just in case you didn’t notice, the original poster did not say hes reading employee private messages for fun, but only to act as law prescribes.

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#319

Post by Cacti » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

secstate wrote: post #212

dsacco wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended? Sigh Totalitarianism is a socio-political paradigm, not a stand-in word to describe things you think constitute surveillance in the context of a business. Companies require the capability to maintain auditable records of employee activity on the information channels they own and manage. Your company is not recordi…

I think the bigger problem that the OP pointed at is that whatever adjectives you attach to this, surveillance is almost always the wrong way to change behavior, unless your desired outcome is to make everyone suspicious of everyone else. What's stopping these folks from creating an out-of-company channel to do the bullying and attacking in coordination via that means, or tricking the victim into joining them in the…

You realize this has far more to do with than workplace harassment, right? Have you never heard of employees using a competitors proprietary information? Or arranging fraudulent financial transactions to cover losses? Or discussing how to mislead investors or watchdog agencies? What do you expect this company to do when they are involved in a legal dispute like this, and have to explain to the court why they have company sanctioned, un-auditable computer systems/applications that helped their employees break serious state and national laws?

Re: Guide to Slack import and export tools

#320

Post by tedivm » Wed, Mar 21, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #254

tedivm wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to tell you this but if you would quit a job for this reason you probably can't work in the US. The US has laws about corporate compliance, and it has requirements for things like dealing with sexual harassment. There is no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a corporate network. For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously. If a company gets a complaint of sexual harass…

> There is no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a corporate network. It's a tech issue, cultural issue, and a legal issue, but it's harmful that we seem to be forgetting the wisdom of discretion as life become more digitized. If the law or culture says "no expectation of discretion", they're just wrong and likely hypocritical. It's healthy, normal, and appropriate to tell specific things to…

Discretion still has its place, but that's different from privacy and compliance.

Most admins aren't going to spend all day reading other people's conversations, and good companies have explicit policies as to when they will do so. The thing we're discussing here isn't whether companies should spy on everything their employees do- it's about what happens when an issue does occur where they do need to look into things.

I would not work for a company where I thought my managers were looking over my shoulder at every single thing I was doing, but at the same time I would not refuse to work for a company just because they could look into my conversations if I was accused of wrongdoing.

People are also ignoring another aspect of this- if a company does get sued by an outside party they have to make internal data available through discovery. These laws about corporate compliance also exist to make it so corporations can be held accountable.