Slashdot Mirror
Are Google and Facebook Surveilling Their Own Employees? (theguardian.com)
The Guardian just ran an article titled " 'They'll squash you like a bug': how Silicon Valley keeps a lid on leakers," which begins with the story of an employee confronted by Facebook's secretive "rat-catching" team:
They had records of a screenshot he'd taken, links he had clicked or hovered over, and they strongly indicated they had accessed chats between him and the journalist, dating back to before he joined the company. "It's horrifying how much they know," he told the Guardian, on the condition of anonymity... "You get on their bad side and all of a sudden you are face to face with Mark Zuckerberg's secret police"... One European Facebook content moderator signed a contract, seen by the Guardian, which granted the company the right to monitor and record his social media activities, including his personal Facebook account, as well as emails, phone calls and internet use. He also agreed to random personal searches of his belongings including bags, briefcases and car while on company premises. Refusal to allow such searches would be treated as gross misconduct...
Some employees switch their phones off or hide them out of fear that their location is being tracked. One current Facebook employee who recently spoke to Wired asked the reporter to turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking if it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook. Two security researchers confirmed that this would be technically simple for Facebook to do if both people had the Facebook app on their phone and location services switched on. Even if location services aren't switched on, Facebook can infer someone's location from wifi access points.
The article cites a 2012 report that Microsoft read a French blogger's Hotmail account to identify a former employee who had leaked trade secrets. And it also reports that tech companies hire external agencies to surveil their employees. "One such firm, Pinkerton, counts Google and Facebook among its clients." Though Facebook and Google both deny this, "Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on employees' conversations...
Al Gidari, consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, says that these tools "are common, widespread, intrusive and legal."
Some employees switch their phones off or hide them out of fear that their location is being tracked. One current Facebook employee who recently spoke to Wired asked the reporter to turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking if it had been near the phones of anyone from Facebook. Two security researchers confirmed that this would be technically simple for Facebook to do if both people had the Facebook app on their phone and location services switched on. Even if location services aren't switched on, Facebook can infer someone's location from wifi access points.
The article cites a 2012 report that Microsoft read a French blogger's Hotmail account to identify a former employee who had leaked trade secrets. And it also reports that tech companies hire external agencies to surveil their employees. "One such firm, Pinkerton, counts Google and Facebook among its clients." Though Facebook and Google both deny this, "Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on employees' conversations...
Al Gidari, consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, says that these tools "are common, widespread, intrusive and legal."
So Amazing they kept the name after this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"... and legal" they write. But at best "and legal in some countries". Most of this would e.g. in Germany require a concrete suspicion and the "worker's council" to be informed (and probably approve) on a per-case basis at the least.
Some of this sounds like it would not be even remotely legal no matter what, unless you call the police and have them do it (which they'll probably not feel like though).
Since they are surveilling half the planet already, why wouldn't they do the same to their employees? Sounds like a no-brainer to me...
Only proles and animals are free.
They are surveilling everyone.
Every once in a while a root surfaces above the ground to reveal itself. We are going to find this is like the tip of iceberg.
With totalitarian tools like this at their finger tips and completely unregulated, they can not help but use them when then want.
This has to be fully explored, exposed and regulated.
It wonâ(TM)t be by govt who probably purchases the intel.
Also.. a whole generation of intel guys are being spoiled by how easy info comes to them now. Traditional detective skills will wane and their appetite for digital surveillance will become (is) voracious.
Problem is seeing and knowing all, they canâ(TM)t help but meddle and manipulate as humans love to do.
It will not be to civilizations benefit. Unchecked power never ends well.
All your facebook are belong to us.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Unplug. Disconnect -- have you tried it?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
What do these companies have to hide?
What are they so afraid of their own employees saying?
Are they just protecting trade secrets, or are they really that paranoid we'll find out about some horrible thing they're doing?
You're not important enough for the NSA, but hey, look at it this way:
You ARE important enough for the Zuck Dream Team, but I wouldn't even consider this to be bragging points at the bar.
At Google, however, you're the silver lining on their cloud.
Of course they are. This is part of a larger trend of new security companies that focus on the 'human element' in security issues, looking for 'insider threats'.
One example is/was RedOwl, which creates scorecards for managers that rated employees on things like:
- Medial leaker
- Saboteur
- "Negligent"
It does this by grabbing all data is can get its hands on, including scanning email inboxes and monitoring employees social media.
I've captured their old website here:
http://www.creepycompanies.com...
I'm getting mighty tired of turning headlines into questoins. Either you do know the answer, so give already, or you don't, in which case you better do some more research. It's your job to inform, not ask your audience to do your job for you.
It isn't illegal to use surveillance on your employees. However, it is highly unethical! I am not surprised that Google and Facebook engage in this behavior because they almost do it to their customers. This is is why I no longer use a Gmail address and I no longer use Facebook. For a competent hobbyist BSD or Linux user, setting up your own email server is crazy easy. And if you don't know how, there are plenty of good tutorials out there just for the searching.
In my college days I worked nights as a Pinkerton and even made sergeant, but I'm also surprised that they retained (or revived?) the name after the sale of the company. I believe the buyer was Wackenhut? Though I wasn't involved in any "actions" involving labor unions, I know the company was historically heavily involved in protecting scabs and otherwise working to bust unions. In my doddering maturity, I think we need balance between the interests of labor and management and that many of America's problems are due to the increasing imbalance... My memories on this part of the history are fuzzier, but I believe the original founders of the agency were two brothers who did a lot of bounty hunting.
Anyway, my ancient experiences are obviously obsolete. Pinkerton certainly had no computer-related skills or expertise in those days.
In my more recent experiences at the shadowy ghost of IBM, I saw plenty of evidence of intrusive but mostly ineffectual monitoring of what employees were doing. They were slightly diplomatic in that they would give you some subtle warnings and it was easy enough to figure out what to stop doing. Most of the explicit guidelines seemed quite reasonable to me, though some of the monitoring software also crippled the employees' machines in significant ways. That was in addition to the anti-virus and configuration remote control software, but the managers never asked about how much efficiency we lost in struggles with the automated configurations and re-configurations.
Trying to figure out if I have any conclusion to offer... I guess it would be that demotivated employees were the largest problem I saw, but I might be projecting. I don't think I was ever demotivated enough to be motivated to actual industrial espionage, but if it had gotten to that point I sure wouldn't say so on Slashdot, would I? (As things actually turned out, I got too old and was sent to the farm upstate to play with the other puppies. But I can't say I wasn't in a race condition at the end.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The companies' official statement is that they do not spy on their own employees
However, they forgot to say that they have Sturmabteilung Troops doing the heavy lifting for them
i'm surprised you even had to ask... YES
Meanwhile, Cambridge Analytica walks out the front door with 50 million user records.
It's their job to generate ad impressions. Controversial clickbait does that job best, especially if you throw in a sprinkle of politics.
The one to blame here is you who expects old-school journalism from them (and those who consider them serious journalists and not just glorified bloggers).
I mean, their main activity isn't to collect as many information about entities and use it for business ?
they are surveilling everyone duh
Surely their own employees eat their own dog food?
What you'd really need at work was a second computer, feeding off your primary work computer, a cached version of the web, and a few other tools.
Hypothetically... /Yeah, I'm posting as AC //No, I'm not a Facebook user.
They're Facebook and Google. The are surveilling everybody.
They make a living off surveilling people.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Consider not working for these companies.
And consider not using their products^w^w being their product.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Don't sign shit you haven't read, people. "But I won't find a better job elsewhere!"... How much is it worth to you?
... my surveilling employer overlords.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I am worried about sockpuppets in the form of old dormant accounts that the /. operators revive and use to 'liven up' the discussions.
It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!
Walk into any fast food restaurant. Those security cameras? They aren't just about preventing armed robbery. They are there to watch employees. Same goes for convenience stores, just about any kind of store.
Your employer probably logs every URL you navigate to, and every email address you exchange emails with.
I don't know why this is even news.
No, no, no, no, no, Yes!
Apply for employment at Amazon, and they make you take a "drug test" via a saliva swab. That's not the way they test for drugs, that's the way they take DNA samples! Every time I've actually been tested for drugs, I had to pee in a cup.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
but they still keep getting bigger and more invasive?
The megacorps of sci-fi dystopia are here, and while they don't have gun toting secret police yet, that will obviously be part of the endgame as they step down the rabbithole.
Their business is surveilling everyone and figuring out how to manipulate
China's practices for using data are being used in large tech companies already and by our governments as well. These tools are basically the "all seeing eye" from Tolken and of course Orwell (other writers I'm sure). But this was also predicted by many movies and few noticed. Check out The Matrix, The Dark Night, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spider-Man: Homecoming. The Circle talked about this more directly but less realistically. (The western government would never allow this monitoring on themselves anymore than the Russian or Chinese governments do). And China is not only tracking everyone through facial recognition glasses worn by police, not only are they keeping database with behavior scores to evaluate who is "disloyal" based on patterns (and past actions of course), but next month they are implementing a "Social Points" system to restrict access to travel for anyone who is considered disloyal based on that database and facial recognition. You are already required to show your ID card for virtually ANY transaction there now. (And is integrated in the WeChat Pay apps of course which is used widely).
If you are interested in stopping this abuse of data power, stop handing your data to them. Remove apps that are not open source (you can get open source apps for Android from F-Droid http://www.f-droid.org/ ). Install a firewall on your phone that can help manage what apps access (Droid Firewall is pretty good). Don't use default Google Android OS (you can't stop it from sending GPS data to them even if you turn it off...Google admitted this late last year, promising to stop using this hard wired phone home feature..sure..). LinageOS works on most Android phones. https://download.lineageos.org...)
Stop using MS Windows, especially Windows 8-10 because not only are data transmitters for every file header and website you visit, but every update Microsoft seems to take more control of the OS away from you (an idea probably borrowed from the iOS updates which did this years ago). You can't stop the auto updates unless you take extreme measures and even they don't work all the time and recently Microsoft is going to force your email links to be opened using Edge rather than your default browser selection. had enough being rammed with a broomstick handle yet by MS? Perhaps you noticed al this Xbox nonsense preinsstalled as well. Have fun reading this summary (see the data separately on other tech sites but this is a nice summary): https://itvision.altervista.or... . You can still buy Windows 7 legal licenses including from http://nerdsforless.com./ But better to just get off MS Windows. Linux can do virtually all the non-gaming things that MS Windows does (and MacOS as well). Linux Mint ( http://www.linuxmint.com/ ) is the easiest version of Linux for MS windows only users to get into. I've had kids as young as 7 years old run this with no assistance, and they all liked it MORE than MS Windows. "No crashes" I kept hearing. Using LibreOffice you can do all your office needs, (I've been on it for for 5 years and it keeps getting better), your favorite browsers (minus Edge but who uses that voluntarily these days) are all there, your email is easy peasy and will play all your videos and stuff. With no tracking from MS or the evil Cortana (that thing is horrible)
Keep any social media apps off your phone. Just...don't install them. You don't need them. Truth is anything that shares data over the web can be made as a mobile friendly website. The only reasons for an app is to take advantage of the data tracking tools on your phone and possibly install a local database there, generally for sending to a 3rd party later. That includes, GPS (in the vast majority of cases) and possibly accessing your contacts, browsing history, and let's not forget possibly your
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I don't care if a Company watches their employees WHILE AT WORK, as that is within their right to do so while an employee is utilizing corporate assets and / or is accessing corporate networks. This isn't new as companies have been doing this for a long time.
It is NOT ok for any company to spy on their employees outside of company time and they should be prosecuted heavily for it.
Protip: Leave your company provided laptop and phone at the office lest you consent to such monitoring. If you telecommute, take whatever precautions you think are necessary as preventative measures.
I imagine working for Google or Facebook is like working for "The Circle" -- which, I also imagine, was the implied point.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The Pinkertons were the first Secret Service. They are who protected Abraham Lincoln. My 6th Great Grand uncle was a Pinkerton for Lincoln. He was called his "coat man" as he carried Lincolns Shawl whenever Lincoln went out on government business.
Famous picture of Major Alan Pinkteron and General John McClernand at a Union camp in Sharpsburg, Maryland in 1862.
https://www.history.com/topics...
The Truth is a Virus!!!
I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised they didn't mention it to us... Not exactly the best historical reference to cite considering what happened at the theater...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/02/12/165259/a-facebook-employee-asked-a-reporter-to-turn-off-his-phone-so-facebook-couldnt-track-its-location
Plus not essentially new news.
People have been using PII data from Facebook for as long as Facebook has been around. I remember being in discussions with incubators folks trying to glean stock prediction data from whatever they could find on facebook. 13 years ago, people didn't really have a sense of censoring themselves on social media and Facebook's API made a great platform for extracting it.
Now Facebook has rules for blocking it, but I mean recently it was revealed that Trump's Campaign stole data too. So it's not exactly related to Google and FB tracking their employees, but the ultimate truth is, they're tracking everybody.
The only way to really go off the grid is to carry no devices with a bag over your head, paying for everything with cash, travel around in a mode of transportation which doesn't need to be registered, like a bicycle, your feet, or a boosted board and subsequently use snail mail or carrier pigeons to carry your missives.
It's like LAIN, there's no place on the planet that's away enough from "the wired".
Yeah GREAT Job protecting Lincoln!
There was only one Pinkerton on duty that night stationed outside the door to the balcony seating area.
Most people don't know Lincoln was Jewish. He was shot in the temple.
The Truth is a Virus!!!
> Are Google and Facebook Surveilling Their Own Employees?
Do we really need to ask these questions? The entire commercial system, along with their "partners", have been weaponized against the public at large and we're still passive-aggressively tip-toeing around around these issues. The war against privacy was lost long ago (legally and illegally). There is only the resistance in the form of Open Source Projects like Linux, it's Distros, their OS programs. Some efforts on decentralization, encryption at rest, etc.. but it's like the 'nickle song'.
I wonder how long it'll be before projects like these and efforts at anti-censorship become targets of the political-corporate elite.
NOT to think they don't! To them, DATA is king, and, as paranoid as a lot of companies are, you can bet they watch EVERYTHING, their employees do, legally & illegally.
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
In the US, some of them have 'building security', sometimes gun-toting. Not so common here - American movies are kind of unreal when someone is fired and they 'tell security to escort them out'. People get fired here too, but there is usually no 'security', not even unarmed. Rare cases of intruders are handled ad-hoc - or by calling the police.
Is it any surprise that they hold their employees in as much contempt as they do their customers?
The tech industry has abandoned any pretense about tech making the world a better place. Tech has become no different than big tobacco or snack food. It has no purpose other than to make its masters richer.
Greedy sociopaths are gonna do what greedy sociopaths do.
You agree to it when you work for them. They may or may not be doing it all the time, but if they do you have nothing to complain about.
And before you think "I'm not doing anything really wrong" consider this...
At a very large bank, I worked with a guy who was a development manager and he had a large staff. He was very friendly with a woman on his team, and he promoted her to a management position. It was pretty clear what was going on, because she was about 10th in line for that position and was terrible at it. After several complaints, HR investigated it and found clear evidence of the affair (they were both married too). Both of them were fired.
But wait - guess what else HR found during the investigation? A lot of people unrelated to this case had engaged in NCAA pools, NFL pools, and played fantasy sports while at work. All of those people involved, about 30 in all, were written up by HR. So while your employer may not be actively watching you, it's all logged.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.