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Workplace Surveillance Becoming More Common
An anonymous reader writes For better or worse, surveillance technology is becoming more common in the workplace. These tools are being used to measure and monitor employees, with the promise changing how people work. "Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction. So a bank's call center introduced a shared 15-minute coffee break, and a pharmaceutical company replaced coffee makers used by a few marketing workers with a larger cafe area. The result? Increased sales and less turnover." Of course, this kind of monitoring raises privacy concerns. "Whether this kind of monitoring is effective or not, it's a concern," said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
Surveillance is only the tool. How it is used (abused) is the key. For example, a camera in the break-room kills good will. Pointedly saying we will be monitoring, but not the break-room increases good will.
Wait what, social interaction makes people more productive? You mean they don't feel like their existence is validated by the calm fuzzy warmth of fabric covered cubicle walls? They need to talk to each other too? But what if they criticize management? Managers' fragile egos can't handle even the possibility of criticism of any kind! You there! Stop talking! Eyes back on the computer screen!
Seriously - they needed surveillance to figure out that workers were happier and more productive when they had some shared sense of purpose?
What next - needing surveillance to figure out people are bothered by random loud buzzing noises?
One day, I was puttering away on some project when the phone rang. "It was totally an accident!" "What was an accident." "I didn't mean to go to that website." "What website." "The porn site." Then it dawned on me that this woman actually thought I sat around all day watching what people were doing on their computers.
I worked for a tech support line in the mid '90s. All breaks were recorded, timed, and provided to managers on a daily basis. At a fortune 100 company in the late '90s, they had static IPS and a proxy with lots of reports. They knew who was on what how many times and when. Daily, weekly, and monthly reports.
I had a written order to install a keylogger on an employee's computer in 1999. He was suspected of using company property to commit crimes. I recorded a crime, and passed it back to the management who ordered the tap. He was fired. No charges were laid.
There is no "new" surveilance. Though it may be becoming more common, it certainly isn't new. At all.
Learn to love Alaska
Watching someone shoot themselves in the foot is far less amusing when said foot is on your neck.
Oh look. Another statist who alleges, completely without irony, that what we need to protect us is more government. As if the government is the entity which will protect us from excessive or illegal surveillance.
Seriously now, have you been under a rock for the past... ~13 years now? Did you miss the headline on Slashdot this very weekend about how the government is perjuring itself and encouraging state and local government entities to engage in massive surveillance?
I'll take my chances regarding employer surveillance policies, thankyouverymuch. At least my employers and clients don't allege they have the authority to monitor every aspect of my life, unlike this unconstitutional government.
I'll tell you what: you get the government to give up its panopticon surveillance state and then we will talk about passing laws so the government can protect me from being spied upon. Go ahead. I'll wait.
When cops freak out because they are being recorded, people go all ballistic. Yes I agree that you should be able to record cops doing their job, but until they get used to it, I don't blame them for being upset.
When it's you being recorded, then that is a whole different case.
This has a long history with the classic "Time and motion study" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Repackaged, sold, rented for the digital age. Expect logs, cameras, spyware, questions, tracking software. Been blacklisted is a risk if you dare to make a fuss, comment or seek outside clarification of your existing rights.
As a boss you are spending a lot to track, log and reshape your staff to do a few tasks really quickly and at a low cost with few breaks every working day.
History is full of stories of perfect production line or office been set up after been sold/rented a system to watch staff.
You end up with a multination with a dormitory, low wages and no ability to change. Lots of hands putting ever more smaller and complex products together fast.
The competition invests in robots and goes smaller, faster, cheaper and with better quality control. The brand was fixated on the time system, tracking their distrusted workers and lost all focus on needed innovation.
The winner is the person selling/renting the surveillance and staff review product, moving onto another boss.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Poor laws don't make all laws poor.
unions are needed before the bathroom break timer system goes into place.
I was the VP of IT for a twenty-plus year old SaaS firm with about 200 employees. I was there for three weeks when one of the interns came in and told me they forgot to install "a security update" for my new company issued laptop. He said it would force my laptop to reboot. I was in the middle of going getting acclimated to the IT budget so I said I'd install it myself later. He agreed. Later that day I inserted the flash drive and saw one binary. I right-clicked and saw the digital signature belonged to Spector 360. Red flags! Red flags!
I spoke to the VP of IS and his jaw hit the floor. We ran Wireshark on his PC and sure enough, it was constantly communicating massive amounts of encrypted data to an internal server that had no hostname. We looked through the employee handbook and there was no mention of monitoring of employee internet use. For a moment, we thought our intern was working with a competitor. But, before we went crazy with that, our next step would be to talk with my predecessor who had stayed with the company to head up a new division. He immediately clammed up and told us we needed to talk to the CEO about it. He refused to talk any further.
We went to the CEO and calmly asked about the program and what was being collected. Apparently, he had the previous VP of IT and the intern installing this software on every PC and laptop and that it was configured to capture everything: keystrokes, screen wipes, browsing history, IM history, etc. I was appalled and I knew my counterpart from IS was as well. Nevertheless, we warned him that controls needed to be in place to determine who has access to this information, under what circumstances the access is granted, etc. We emphasized the risk he was putting the company in. We were very professional and didn't even touch the creepy aspect. He said we'd all have a meeting about it in the morning. He scheduled it for 8am with me, the IS guy, the COO, company counsel, and the company president.
At 4:45PM, about an hour after we received the meeting invite, both me and the VP of IS were rounded up, taken to the CEO's office, and promptly terminated.
AC you seem to be missing the news that results from "chances regarding employer surveillance policies" are now shared at a nation level.
The results of been watched do not stop when you exit a workplace or seek new work.
"Thousands of workers 'blacklisted' over political views" (07 August 2012)
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
"construction workers punished by employers for raising health and safety issues" (10 September 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Construction workers' blacklist (Nov 18, 2013)
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I was fired because I would write to my wife about the absolutely stupid things my boss and "peers" would say and do. It turns out my boss, who was completely non technical but running an IT department, was reading our email. My former boss has surrounded himself with idiotic sycophants and apparently they've had to hire 3 consultants to do the job I was doing.
He actually did me a favor. I hated working in that department, one of my peers was the owner's son and my boss was constantly sucking up to junior even though junior was my "peer". Junior is non technical too. That particular clique of management has managed to drive all the technical managers out and now they have a bunch of incompetent posers who have earned the distrust and loathing of all the people under them. They can't even make decisions on their own, they have to consult Gartner or other consultants.
I'd name names but they paid me a shit ton of money to never out them. It ended up working out well for me though. I'm making much more money and working with very smart and competent people. Sometimes more surveillance just speeds up the dysfunction that is already present in an organization.
"Through these new means, companies have found, for example, that workers are more productive if they have more social interaction."
lie, lie, lie. this is referring to the so-called open-office scheme, where they remove your privacy and sound barriers, sometimes even remove your personal desk and you are now 'fully interchangable cogs' to the company.
this has been proven to be wrong, but it keeps getting trotted out, as if repeating it over and over again will make us believe it.
CEO and bean-counter bullshit. see it for what it is.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
shorten that to:
unions are needed.
again.
sweatshops (for computer guys) are on the return. if you and I are not careful, we will be so close to the old ways, we will have to fight that old war back again. we already lost our weekends and we lost time and a half for overtime (my grandfather used to get 1.5x, 2x and 3x time for time past normal work hours). we don't get that - we're now the evil thing called 'exempt' and we get cheated out of our own time and extra pay.
add to insult the fact that all corp firewalls have a MitM proxy in them, corp windows boxes are handed out preloaded with certs installed (for the mitm firewall entry) and at some places (like where I work) its been known that spyware and remote mic/camera stuff can be activated and logged/reviewed by your boss. how do I know: because in .de they have to disclose this and my work has offices in .de ; in the US they don't disclose what they do when spying but over in .de they do).
if we dont fight back, things will continue to get worse.
oh right, we don't have unions so we are all afraid of speaking out, for sake of our jobs.
well, so we have 2 problems to solve, then.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Most programmers and people in IT in general are classified as exempt. Given the level of monitoring and control; the idea that IT people are exempt is a joke. Shift the classification to non-exempt and start paying overtime.
Seriously - they needed surveillance to figure out that workers were happier and more productive when they had some shared sense of purpose?
Most likely those companies are simply re-discovering the Hawthorne Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hawthorne_effect and exhibiting more irony than a Portland hipster considering its classic industrial psychology.
Because private detective agencies hired by private employers to snoop on workers and ruin them is OK AND is FREEDOM.
Laws to prevent this are bad because GOVERNMENT EVIL.
For a real example of private company goon squads, try the Ford "Service Department"
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
I actually work for a company that sells a SIEM tool that lends itself very nicely to monitoring of insiders. (read: employee surveillance) While most usecases are around PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and that sort of thing, invariably there are "four eyes" usecases as well. These usecases tend to bridge into the way an employee compares to their fellow employees, particularly those in the same business unit / group / job function. This tends to uncover things like people in x group come into work at 9:01a, Bill, a member of x group, comes in at 9:33a most days. Bill also tends to browse the internet on y-type sites whereas people in x group are usually active on z-type sites. Bill spends b-time with the average customer call, and takes c calls per day. Whereas x-group employees typically take 10minutes less than b-time for the average customer call, and take c+5 calls per day. SIEM tools are built to bring in most any type of data, and lots of it. Built-in correlation is normally security-centric, but is easily adapted for most anything. For example, Bill is marked as being on a business trip to Birmingham, AL but his VPN connection is coming from the FL keys *flag*. Or, more ominous, Bill said he was out at lunch with clients for an hour, but the geolocation-software installed into his phone says he was located around a car dealership, and was there for 3 hours.
You don't need to surveil employees to figure out they work better with a little down time, and then force a 15 minute break on them. Let them socialize naturally and judge them on their performance. No Orwellian panopticon needed. How about not treating human beings as robots? Did that thought ever occur to management? I doubt it.
Fidgeting with people's coffee makers isn't necessary either.
Did you reach out to the general counsel after your termination?
Dear Corporate America,
Your employees will begin to resent your "15 minute department coffee breaks" as soon as they learn they were born from spying on work habits, or pulled out of the latest fad HR / Management best seller. This ranks up there with silly morale boosters like "crazy Hawaiian shirt Fridays" for a developer team that is crushing 60 hour weeks and just wants to go home.
Please accept a few thoughts on true lasting employee and corporate culture improvements:
1, end the "Corporate Daycare" mentality. Arriving at 8:05 isn't the end of the world, particularly if that employee is conscientious about staying until 5:10 to compensate. Actually, have you heard of "Flex Time" , at all? Adult professionals shouldn't be shamed for making coffee at 3:30 requiring they leave their desk for 20 minutes.
2, Realize that company-provided smartphones are essentially the same as taking your manager home with you, and stop fucking sending emails after 5pm unless it's an emergency. Stop sending meeting invites at 9pm for 9 AM meetings with the expectation that employees will see it, reply immediately and be present the next morning. Let's just tie this back to "treat people like adult professionals, the way you would like to be treated."
3, Your company suffers failure of imagination and naked greed. Make your employees participants in your companies' success. Ask them for product improvements, new product ideas, and give them more than a plaque or a parking space for coming through with groundbreaking ideas. Give them bonuses. Uncomfortably large bonuses. Watch in amazement as suddenly your employees are transformed from the cave-dwelling Morlocks from HG Wells "The Time Machine" to highly motivated people who will make the company significantly more money.
4, Value for Value. Pay people what they are worth. Treat them with respect. They will work hard for you.
5, There are artists - people who can start with a blank canvas and create a photorealistic painting from their minds' eye. There are people who can't do that, but can take a blank canvas, pencil a grid on it, and methodically reproduce the photorealistic painting with 95% accuracy. This is the difference between Richard Branson and every asshole with an MBA. Far more often than not, the largest source of employees' discontent stems from bad management. Leading and motivating people is a preternatural talent, and the people with that gift are worth sourcing and retaining at all costs. All star leadership will cut your employee churn, boost your productivity, and earn your company more money.
6, Stack Ranking, Six Sigma, when will you people realize that human beings are psychologically complicated animals and applying scientific optimization models originally designed to optimize efficiency in industrial manufacturing environments has little or no value when applied to the talking meat populating your cubicles.
Six Sigma is spectacularly effective at destroying true innovation, creativity and blue-sky thinking, and has no place outside of the factory. I'm glad everyone who attended a training seminar at the airport Hilton immediately ads "Six Sigma Level 3 Grand Wizard" in their Outlook signature to quickly identify those persons I never, ever wish to have a meaningful conversation about new product with, as part of the Six Sigma training is to destroy the part of the brain responsible for creative thinking by way of directed electrical current applied using a special helmet. Other electrodes in the helmet stimulate the part of the brain making you feel incredibly enthusiastic about applying Six Sigma to everything you imagine to be possible.
Stack Ranking is essentially the same cruel process used by 10 year olds choosing teams for kickball at recess, and often with the same level of consideration. The guy answering his company Outlook emails until 10:30 every night, who also pipes up frequently in meetings - albeit absent any meaningful contributions in either - color me surprised if that guy doesn't do well in the soul crushing quarterly Stack Rank.
Corporate America is soulless.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
I'm an embedded systems engineer for a company in the US, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of a large Japanese company. We enjoy comforts like alternate work schedules, telecommuting, etc. Our Japanese counterparts, however, arrive at work promptly at 8 am, spend much of each day in meetings, and then begin actual work well after noon. They work late into the night (~8:30P or later), have dinner at 10, go to bed and wake up the next day for more of the same. And, they work on Saturday. Additionally, they all wear uniforms -- it's like watching prisoners march to the mess hall when it's time for their collective department lunch break, given at 45 minute intervals.
Not only are they not as productive, their creativity is obviously stifled. Aside from the cultural norm of not wanting to rock the boat or "think outside the box", they are simply unable to innovate and create the same way we are. Indeed, when they need some creative problem solving, they come here to the US for brainstorming sessions. And, the frustrating thing is, I get the impression that they feel their way is superior. Not so. They live to work, while we work to live.
sig: sauer
1. It is fun to spy on others. It is not fun to be spied upon.
2. You exert power and authority by spying on others, and by forcing them to accept surveillance.
3. People, if they know someone's spying on them, will find ways to thwart or subvert surveillance. Spying then becomes an arms race between those who want to observe and those who resist being observed.
Would I trust the state to legislate against the state monitoring and prying? Absolutely not.
Would I trust the state to ensure that it has a monopoly on the monitoring and prying? Sure.
I don't know if you're joking or not, but don't expect too much of people. If you want people to socialize with you, you have to socialize with them. And it takes time to build little relationships. Especially with engineers.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Hey, you only do the work of TWO people? Lucky you. I would keep quiet about that though...
"Of course, this kind of monitoring raises privacy concerns."
What privacy concerns would those be? You have no expectation of privacy at work except when on the phone or emailing with your spouse, doctor, lawyer, or other professional where there is a statutory privilege (which may or may not be permitted anyway, depending on employer policy regarding personal use of company resources).
The company has every right to monitor how its resources are being used. Employees who misuse company resources are committing Honest Services Fraud, which is a Felony.
Unions are a double edged sword on the positive they do tend to protect against some of this stuff. On the negative they are expensive to maintain and that money comes out of the employee's check every week. Also they tend to rob you of flexibility.
My brother is a union member and because of that union contract there are some things he simply doesn't have to put up with. On the other hand because of that union contract he can't have alternative work schedules, he can't negotiate different duties with his boss, and in general he has far less flexibility than a non-union employee. My brother gets irritated because the union is dominated by a lot of employees who fear change so he can't get some of the things he wants because the majority votes against it. So realize if you accept the union you are agreeing to basically let your co-workers have a vote on your career decisions because those decisions will be made collectively rather than on an individual basis. Whether this is a good or bad thing is going to depend upon who you are, what industry you are in, whether there are better deals to be had and how likely you are to be able to negotiate one of those deals for yourself. If you are a top 10% employee for example odds are a union is going to be bad for you. If you are more of a midrange employee or someone who isn’t comfortable negotiating for yourself, and will thus never get those available deals, the union may be good for you.
Another aspect of giving up your own autonomy to gain the protection of a union is that you may be called upon to go on strike. This has happened to my brother twice in his career and both times it was a real hardship as their strike fund doesn't totally replace your paycheck. You also end up picketing when they tell you to even if it is raining in January.
Yeah . . . no thanks. I don't need anyone negotiating my salary on my behalf. I don't need some deadweight lazy incompetent being promoted ahead of me just because they've been at the company forever. And as a manager, I sure don't need to lose the important ability to fire a worker who just isn't working out. If I don't like my job or my employer, I will simply leave and find a new one. This is technology, not bureaucracy . . . please don't try to ruin it for the rest of us.
Oh yes, teh evilz of the unions.
Tell you what. Go back to a 12 hour six day work week, give back your sick leave, healthcare and vacation.
You won't though will ya? Because while you hate the unionz, and the lazy commies and n'er do wells that they are, you don't have the fortitude to give back anything they've ever done for you? Any union hater of any ethics at all would never ever take advantage of tainted acquisitions.
Hypocrite.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No. We're a "work at will" state, so they can fire anyone for any reason at any time.
This kind of thing is why James Madison added the 9th Amendment to the Bill of Rights, and didn't restrict it to just limiting Congress (unlike, for example, the 1st Amendment).
The 9th Amendment is there to provide a mechanism to allow people to assert rights against state and local governments as well as against the federal government, and to have those rights supersede the state and local law. In joining the union, the states are bound by this, and local governments come along with state government.
Madison knew from his own legal experience that state governments would attempt to violate fundamental rights. He went to bat for the Methodists against the state of Virginia attempting -- in violation of its own Bill of Rights -- to force them to pay to support the Anglican church. He won (and this victory would later pave the way to getting him elected to Congress in the predominantly Methodist districts his home was located near, in spite of massive gerrymandering by senior Virginia state officials intended to keep him out of Congress).
In this case, one could assert a right to not, in general, be spied upon by one's employer. Such a right respects basic human dignity, and thus can be considered a fundamental right. It is part of the right to privacy.
In some circumstances, infringement of this right could be justified (all rights have limits), but the circumstances under which this could be done would have to be carefully worked out (not just with respect to when surveillance could happen, but what could be done with the data). If private entities can arbitrarily violate fundamental rights, then they can become a tool for government to violate fundamental rights, and thus the protection of these rights against government necessarily involves limiting many private entities as well.
Here, as is so often the case, the challenge in fighting this kind of thing is not in defining right and wrong (the company was clearly in the wrong, if the facts described are correct), but in getting the legal profession to remember that they swore oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights, and act appropriately.