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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."
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."
next~!
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
That's why I wear the hat people... to keep the government from tracking my thoughts.
It looking like a pirate hat is just me expressing my sense of fashion.
I can't call him a hero, but I definitely can't call him a bad guy. If you can play golf all the time and the only way the boss knows is by tracking you, the boss doesn't know much about what proper productivity can do. Follow this by the fact that so much "work" done these days is pointless BS anyway. He's only half a hero though--because his work probably isn't pointless BS if it's maintenance that's not initially noticeable but will later cost clients money or perhaps even lives.
To be a full hero, do your job. If your job is being a boss, consider doing it without being big brother. Then you'd both be good regular guys, who are so scarce these days that they look like full-on heroes.
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
Or as a Will Smith fan.
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.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
With 140 games of golf, surely his productivity must have taken a hit.
His swing, on the other hand, has developed nicely.
Wonder what his handicap was....
Sorry but that is senior managements responsibility, stick to sneaking naps at work like everyone else.
Working
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Since when did you have to be "an experienced electrician" to know that Mylar blocks a device's GPS radio?
Maybe Slashdot should have hired an experienced editor to write the summary.
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.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Because most people don't have the sort of of job or visibility that the media would care?
No, this company did what most companies due... fire an employee who is egregiously breaking the rules for cause.
person cheats system, gets caught, pays punishment
Or, rather, he Cheetos the system ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No, this company did what most companies due... fire an employee who is egregiously breaking the rules for cause.
Right. Calling Cheetos "Twisties"... What's next? Kleenex is just folded shit tickets in a pretty cardboard dispenser?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Blue ruin, what a bloomin' bludger!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Finding the article lacking, I did a little more digging and found some reviews of Twisties.
... said tinfoil hat wearers everywhere.
You can't have a Faraday cage without grounding it. While this foil wrapper did work, it's only because GPS signals are very, very weak.
What you did there, I saw it.
I tend to rant.
He worked so hard at not working.
Table-ized A.I.
Poster is unaware of the existence of a larger world outside of the United States. Everyone else please take care to only discuss the outside world elsewhere lest poster is be shocked by the sudden revelation.
He was claiming to have performed work that he never actually did. He was caught out when it was shown that he hadn't serviced the equipment he was claiming to have done. basically unless you expect the manager to be running to every site and inspecting the equipment after it is supposedly serviced I am not sure what you think the Manager could have done. The guy lied his arse off, eventually these sort of people get caught but it isn't realistic for a manager to be standing over a supposed professional workmans shoulder all day every day.
He was fully forthcoming to his managers when he said he was going out faraday.
Poster is unaware of the existence of a larger world outside of the United States.
Though we sometimes may appear larger than life, in both our accomplishments and our embarrassments, fewer of us believe we're actually a planet than are members of the Flat Earth Society... although to be fair, any membership in those particular clubs is a bit of a black eye.
Everyone else please take care to only discuss the outside world elsewhere lest poster is be shocked by the sudden revelation.
Neither irony nor sarcasm is clever argument.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Because running around your backyard instead of doing your work is somehow better than playing golf?
Not in Australia, they can't.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
basically unless you expect the manager to be running to every site and inspecting the equipment after it is supposedly serviced I am not sure what you think the Manager could have done.
Not every site, but some sites. After all, the manager/supervisor's job is to supervise. If all employees were capable of working without supervision, managers would be out of their jobs.
Using a chip bag as a faraday cage to block your employer's tracking device from communicating with satellites in order to goof off isn't interesting to you?
Turn in your nerd badge immediately. And don't try to snack-bag your way out of this one.
Seriously, what the fuck? Are slashdotters so miserable that we're more interested in cheering someone getting punished than an amusing hack?
Seriously, what the fuck? Are slashdotters so miserable that we're more interested in cheering someone getting punished than an amusing hack?
Posting AC to avoid burning modded posts.
Yes, altogether too many Slashdotters er bitter-ass gits. Where we were once home to technologists, we are mostly just pissed off trolls now who worship 1950.
Wouldn't that have been easier?
No, they'd just have more time to focus on the aspects of management other than supervision.
I have a manager. She deals with shit so that I don't have to, argues with HR and her manager to get me pay rises, and lets me know the things she's being asked to help with.
In return I sometimes help her with them. Sometimes I just do my own thing and let her know. Sometimes I don't let her know; I tend to be rather good at getting credit for the work I do anyway, without needing the shameless self promotion.
So I see they spent a bunch of time and effort looking at records for PDA and security gates and cell towers etc.
But it seems like the pattern wasn't too hard to predict.
Why not just catch him at the golf course the next time?
It would be trivial for a manager to camp out at the Coffee Club across the road from a job site one day and observe that Mr Colella never turned up on that day despite having logged an 8 hour time sheet for it.
Conservatives aren't snowflakes
You're right. Snowflakes are unique - parroting does not make your perspective either unique or interesting.
Grandpa basically "McGivers" a device, and gets fired? And does anyone think Security businesses haven't stopped eating their soup and are steering?
Because it's Australia. Unconditional sacking isn't legal here.
Lick those boots!
It would be trivial for a manager to camp out at the Coffee Club across the road from a job site one day and observe that Mr Colella never turned up on that day despite having logged an 8 hour time sheet for it.
I suppose you could run your business so that the employee was 100% physically monitored during work hours by a manager, and then a senior manager 100% physically monitored the manager and so on up to the CEO who would be shadowed by a non-executive member of the Board, who would be shadowed by the Secret Service or something.
I think productivity might take a bit of a hit though.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...that the main reason he was found out was that his boss saw him playing golf because he himself was playing golf during work hours...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Twisties are orders of magnitude better than Cheetos.
Source: have eaten both.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
First issue is tracking employees without individual consent. Here I find it perfectly okay to use anti-tracking means.
Second issue is the employee playing golf 140 times on company time. That is not okay.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
This is about as true as it gets. This site used to be a very educated place where people would post actual informative concepts and ideas. It used to be fun. Recently I've been modded down for literally mentioning that the FCC's job is to regulate communications. I don't even know why I would have to tell someone that or why I would lose points for mentioning it.. but there you go.
once more into the breach
/. isn't hip enough to attract younger crowd, and existing readership is getting older. People get curmudgeonly with age, and this is precisely what is happening here.
Now get off my lawn!
No, this company did what most companies due... fire an employee who is egregiously breaking the rules for cause.
Right. Calling Cheetos "Twisties"... What's next? Kleenex is just folded shit tickets in a pretty cardboard dispenser?
Having had both Cheetos and Twisties (Cheetos are also available in Australia) they are completely different types of snacks. Different density, texture, flavour the lot.
Secondly, "Kleenex" is a name of a brand of tissues, not toilet paper. People outisde of the US rarely use generic brand names, a "Kleenex" is a tissue, when you need to blow your nose, you use a tissue because there are many different brands and we speak English out here.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I for one enjoyed reading the summary. I kept thinking to myself was it the same bag over and over or was he really piling the crumbs on this device? Did he simply leave the device in the bag 24/7... or did he just put it in there whenever he wanted time off. I guess I'm off to read the article.
If people detect your post as an argument going against the groupthink, it now gets modded troll/flamebait regardless of being factually accurate and logically consistent. Good debate used to get modded up even in disagreement; not anymore. And if you think it's bad here you should see what the moderation is like on ArsTechnica these days.
No it wasn't, that movie was shit.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I actually RTFA and the judgement by the arbiter too.
Yes, it was mildly interesting, but TFS made it sound more like a termination rant rather than a clever hack.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I am not a fan of micromanagers but this is quality control issue not big brother.
Quality control is not a trivial thing to over look. With software with have automatic tests and QA departments. In a service industry part of QA is anonymous monitoring of the quality of the service your staff provides. This is reasonable AND respectable.
This is how a healthy employee/manager relationship should be. Once the goals of the company are communicated, the manager should be able to trust that the employee will work to achieve those goals. The manager should then focus on removing obstacles to the employee's success. Essentially, the manager works for their employees
Micromanaging is a symptom of low trust in the employee/manager relationship.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Just a guess, but I'd say he wasn't playing 140 games of golf prior to the tracking policy.
It sounds like this guy was close to retirement, upper brass decided to issue everyone PDA for the express purpose of tracking individual movements. He complained about it, likely due to the invasion of privacy. He was forced to use it anyway. So it seems he decided to show them how stupid he thought their idea was, and how easy it was to circumvent it using a chip bag, while at the same time giving them the finger by going and playing golf all day...
He eventually got caught, and he probably expected them to find out, and got canned, which isn't unexpected, and I doubt he really was surprised. I'm sure he is probably laughing about the fact that it actually worked so long, playing 140 games of golf takes a fair amount of time I would expect! In the end, after so long, likely someone who works with him ran into him on the golf course and was bitter, or just as likely he was bragging about it to other staff further thumbing his nose at management, with predictable results.
Just saying ... if my employer wanted to track me in a similar way I'd go work for someone else.
I suppose you could run your business so that the employee was 100% physically monitored during work hours by a manager
I am unsure why extremes are always sought. A good manager will sample their employee's work from time to time to ensure that what the manager expects to be happening is indeed actually happening. If the sampling were instead 100% of the time, then the manager effectively becomes the employee. If you do not sample at all, you have no idea if your expectations are reality.
TL;DR You must test reality from time to time in order to ensure that your thoughts are consistent with reality.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
So...golf.
Don't tell employer how you store your tracking device.
"There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and
i give the guy A+ for creativity ... i'd let him off with a warning ... but just once ... creative minds are hard to find
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?