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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).
Unplug. Disconnect -- have you tried it?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
It isn't illegal to use surveillance on your employees.
That rather depends on the legal jurisdiction of their employment and the type of surveillance. In the EU, employees will normally be entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy. Which raises the interesting question of whether more intrusive surveillance in the US is a matter of "because we should" or simply "because we can".
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
Your new career at Cambridge Analytica has been approved.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
And I'm shocked that anyone would believe that two of the most famous stream-gleaning successes *ever*, wouldn't be sniffing, snorting, and otherwise gleaning the hell out of their internal traffic. Their very production engines are optimized for this sort of thing.
Facebook not know that their "secret projects" are being leaked?
Google, whose very existence is built upon their ability to sift your stuff, not sifting your stuff?
I think they have to use a Pinkertons just to make it look legit by proxy.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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
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.
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
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!!!
How's life in the hypocrite lane?