Australian Man Uses Snack Bags As Faraday Cage To Block Tracking By Employer (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 60-year-old electrician in Perth, Western Australia had his termination upheld by a labor grievance commission when it was determined he had been abusing his position and technical knowledge to squeeze in some recreation during working hours. Tom Colella used mylar snack bags to block GPS tracking via his employer-assigned personal digital assistant to go out to play a round of golf -- more than 140 times -- while he reported he was offsite performing repairs.

In his finding against Colella, Australia Fair Work Commissioner Bernie Riordan wrote: "I have taken into account that Mr Colella openly stored his PDA device in an empty foil 'Twisties' bag. As an experienced electrician, Mr Colella knew that this bag would work as a faraday cage, thereby preventing the PDA from working properly -- especially the provision of regular GPS co-ordinate updates Mr. Colella went out of his way to hide his whereabouts. He was concerned about Aroona tracking him when the Company introduced the PDA into the workplace. He protested about Aroona having this information at that time. Mr Colella then went out of his way to inhibit the functionality of the PDA by placing it in a foil bag to create a faraday cage."

Comments

Read the report

[guruevi]

It's not all he did nor the only way they substantiated the facts. He claimed to be at work, but never swiped in at the client sites and things like chlorine analysers show they were never serviced even though he claimed they did.

probably impractical

[swell]

Your phone will try to connect to wifi & cell towers. It will try HARD. It will drain the battery rapidly. At least that's what my phone did when I traveled to a very remote area. It got very hot and drained a full battery in less than two hours. It was an older model, YMMV.

Additional information

[tgibson]

Finding the article lacking, I did a little more digging and found some reviews of Twisties.

Re:Since When

[Known Nutter]

If they don't understandarc flash then they should damned well sue their schools / instructors / mentors. Without that awareness they probably stand facing a breaker as they're pulling the lever to open it, and could be burned, blinded, or killed if there's a fault. Number One Rule - stand BESIDE the breaker with your face turned away before you pull the switch!

I appreciate what you're saying. Please remember, though, there is a huge divide between having awareness of arc flash and understanding arc flash. They all all aware that they need to stand to the side when opening/closing a breaker because that's how they were trained. Most may be aware of why they should. Fewer, though, understand how to determine the level of incident energy they would be exposed to should something go wrong. Available fault current and clearing time upstream being two examples of a multitude of factors that most do not understand because they simply weren't trained. They are mechanics first, electricians second. Part of what I do is help them get to a level beyond awareness.