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When Big Brother Watches IT
bdking writes "In an effort to protect sensitive data from internal security threats, some organizations are 'using new technology to look at the language of their IT staff's emails to determine whether their behavior or mind-set has changed,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Is secretly spying on and linguistically interpreting employee emails going too far in the name of security? From the article: 'I understand the need to be aware of the attitudes of workers with high-level access to data and networks, but this strikes me as creepy. What if an IT employee suddenly has relationship problems or family issues? Will they then be flagged by HR as potentially troublesome or even a data security risk? And all without them even knowing there's a dossier being created of them and their "suspect" behavior?'"
Wouldn't it just be cheaper to not treat workers like shit?
Table-ized A.I.
If an HR department can install and manage software that interfaces with a companies email without IT knowing about, that company has bigger security concerns. If IT manages it, IT can circumvent it.
What if an IT employee suddenly has relationship problems or family issues?
There's definitely something suspicious going on when IT employees have relationships, nevermind relationship problems.
"I understand the need to be aware of the attitudes of workers with high-level access to data and networks, but this strikes me as creepy. What if an IT employee suddenly has relationship problems or family issues?"
Not commenting on whether monitoring employee emails is right or wrong, but why would somebody use their corporate email account to deal with relationship or family issues? In a world where companies can and often will read their employees' emails, that anyone would use their work email for anything personal seems short-sited. Sign up for one of the free web-based mail accounts.
That's why I never send personal email on the company's system. I also don't keep any personal files on the company supplied computer nor do web browsing on it. It's a hassle sometimes, especially when I need to carry around my personal laptop. And, in reverse, I never do "work" on my personal computers. While I don't think my company is spying on me, I go by that assumption because they can start at any time without my knowledge. It's my way of mitigating that risk. In general, I think it's also a good way to keep my personal life separate from work. I learned that years ago during some stress reduction workshops I participated in.
I got suddenly canned from a sysadmin job when I showed signs of irritability and started requesting half-days off here and there. Except in this case it was because my boyfriend was critically ill, and they knew that. They just didn't give a fuck.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The it security team trumps the it sysadmin team.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In Washington state, anyway, the email of all us state employees is considered to be part of the public record... so in theory this sort of monitoring would be relatively easy to implement. Funny thing is - as a Washington state employee, I feel less vulnerable to this sort of snooping than if I were employed by a private company.
#DeleteChrome
...do yourself and your admin a favor and get rid of him/her. He/she won't like working for someone who doesn't trust him/her, and you won't like constantly being suspicious.
I've given that advice to all my clients over the years. You can extend the concept to the rest of your IT and/or security team. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take precautions, have checks and balances in place, etc, but fundamentally, if there isn't a high level of trust, deal with the lack of trust, either by discussing it until there is an understanding and trust, or by ending the relationship.
Secretive monitoring is not the way to handle a lack of trust. The only exception is when there is already probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, then, in some cases, monitoring to gather proof may or may not be necessary or appropriate.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
A more important question is why would anyone take anything said at "ITWorld" as factual?
It's not just ITWorld's say-so. They cite this WSJ article, which also says so.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Unions do have their place. An IT shop is not one of them.
You should really try to be more open-minded about such things. Maybe even consider moving to Sweden, where nearly everyone is entitled to union representation whether they bother to join one or not.
When we got bought, and the new owners tried to take away nearly all my benefits, my IT workers' union did a pretty good job of nipping that nonsense in the bud. Maybe I should show my appreciation by signing up and paying them the ~$25 per month they want as dues for actual membership. That's only about 2% of what I would have lost if they'd not gone to bat for me.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I believe this was more of an analysis. They fed thousands of time stamped memos into an algorithlim. The idea was to look for differences in speech pattern or word choice in reference to the conspiracy.
What they found in Enron at least was that as people behaved increasingly corrupt they became increasingly formal with each other. Casual comments tended to be innocent ones where as memos concerning the corruption tended to unusually professional.
Personally, I don't care what the company does with my corporate email. Scan away. It's so boring that I understand why they want to have a computer read it instead. And who knows, they might actually uncover a problem.
Obviously people will be worried about false positives. But I doubt anyone is going to take the computer's opinion as gospel. Likely, the computer will just point to a given collection of emails and suggest management read those specifically. Where upon management can decide if they have a problem or not.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Isn't the real problem that yet another non-scientific unproven analytic tool is going to be deployed in an attempt to discern what people are really thinking? There may be lots of reasons why someone's language changes, including events in their personal lives that have no relationship to work as long as they continue to carry out their duties competently. Imagine being called to the bosses office or HR to "explain" why your behavior has changed when you may not have realized the change yourself, and it has nothing to do with work. Failure to provide a satisfactory explanation will result in greater suspicion of your intentions, especially if the system that detected your behavioral "abnormalities" was sold with the understanding that it really could spot bad eggs before they cracked.