6 ms·

This seemed like a grab bag of "Here are some bad things about being poor that are vaguely related to privacy" with the only common thread being Professor Gilma

This seemed like a grab bag of "Here are some bad things about being poor that are vaguely related to privacy" with the only common thread being Professor Gilman's willingness to speak about them. Poverty is brutal, but I'm not convinced that the privacy lens really adds a lot. I'm also not convinced that privacy problems truly affect the poor more. The government surveillance mentioned here is a big problem. But on the commercial side, companies are a lot more interested in acquiring the personal, financial, and medical data of the rich. And as the article admits, people making higher incomes are more likely to have their information stolen. A lot of the evidence in this piece amounts to "surveys show that people earning under $40k worry about X more than people earning over $40k." That's a very weak form of evidence.

UweSchmidt 8y ago
I think the article is quite specific and articulate about the problem: "Employers of low-income workers listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television, and require psychometric tests as conditions of employment." This makes government surveillance (as serious as it is) feel like a distant, abstract issue.
- AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
  listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television In Wall Street these were mandatory since many years ago. Source: was tested for drugs as a part of my employment screening.
- mrosett 8y ago
  They also pay low wages, don't provide paid sick days, fire you if you're late, provide less training, and so on. There's a lot of bad stuff about being poor; I'm not convinced that the privacy angle adds a lot. The sentence you quoted is framed to make some of those things sound worse than they are. "Listen to phone calls" - does that just refer to call centers recording calls for training/quality purposes? And "Monitor closed-circuit television" just is another way of saying "Many low-income employees work in places with security cameras." Finally, "require psychometric tests" sounds ominous, but a) college serves as a long psychometric test and b) interviews are informal psychometric tests. The unifying thread is that employers have to invest more in supervising low-productivity workers.
  - UweSchmidt 8y ago
    Well, if you have been working in a place with security cameras, then that place has gotten worse recently, privacy-wise. 10 years ago they would dig out the surveillance tapes to try and identify a burglar. Now they might automatically detect employee behaviour: That's something that affecs poor warehouse workers. A lot of that creepy stuff is moving upwards to white collar jobs, does that weaken the argument the article makes or does it just mean the problem is expanding 'upwards'?
  - clairity 8y ago
    > "...employers have to invest more in supervising low-productivity workers." why do you believe these workers are low-productivity? are they unworthy of dignity and privacy as a result? why do you believe the employers are qualified supervisors? have you never had a bad manager? might it be possible that the employers have no idea how to encourage productivity, and that low productivity is induced by a coercive and surveilled work environment? so many assumptions packed into those little words...
- astura 8y ago
  This is just complete BS, drug tests are mostly required for mid-to-high paying jobs, not your typical low income job. I've never had to take a drug test for any of the sub $10/hour jobs I've worked, I've had to take a drug test for every single software job I've ever worked. In fact, I have an acquaintance who was talking about quitting weed the other day and how difficult is is. When I asked her what made her quit she said "I'm sick of making only $30,000 a year and any jobs that pay over $30,000 a year are going to require a drug test." Having your work phone calls monitored is hardly something to get worked up about (you're using your phone for work...do you also get mad when your supervisors monitor your work in person?) and almost certainly not specific to low income employees. CCTV is literally everywhere, nobody low income works in my building and everyone's monitored with CCTV. Big whoop. Psychometric tests are very, very uncommon and not at all specific to low income employees, in fact, I'd argue the opposite (I mean... college is basically treated as a psychometric test)
  - notfromhere 8y ago
    i've never heard of any place in tech that drug tested that didn't involve getting a security clearance. no one's drug testing people making 100k+, but drug tests for low-level jobs are far, far more common than you think.
    - astura 8y ago
      Sure your cool valley startup with a flip-flop wearing CEO isn't going to require a drug test (and probably not a formal background check), but buttoned up corporate America absolutely does as well as government and most companies who does business with government. So basically most non-small-companies outside of California. Employee drug testing got popular in the early-90s, it was even the topic of a Seinfeld joke. Though I hear its becoming less common in the last few years, and some have stopped testing for marijuana. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/employment-trends/2018/05/03/labor-shortage-businesses-mellow-over-hiring-pot-smokers/573710002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/employment-tren... >There is no definitive data on how many companies conduct drug tests, though the Society for Human Resources Management found in a survey that 57 percent do so. Nor is there any recent data on how many have dropped marijuana from mandatory drug testing. >After the Drug-Free Workplace Act was enacted in 1988, amid concerns about cocaine use, drug testing spread to most large companies. All Fortune 500 companies now engage in some form of drug testing, according to Barry Sample, a senior director at Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest testing firms.
dictum 8y ago
> But on the commercial side, companies are a lot more interested in acquiring the personal, financial, and medical data of the rich That's not what VC's obsession about scale is all about. Volume matters. Millions of poor parents buying diapers can make an empire.
bluGill 8y ago
Poor people are at risk. Even though they are poor, they collectively have more money than the rich have collectively. Target a rich person for a million, or a million poor people for a dollar, either way you have the same amount in the end. There are different ways you target each, but there are plenty of scheme to choose from on both ends. (or even in the middle)
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > Even though they are poor, they collectively have more money than the rich have collectively. That entirely depends on how you define "rich" and "poor", which is a nontrivial thing to decide. In 2019 in the US, the top 10% wealthiest households collectively have more than twice as much money as the bottom 90% collectively. But lots of people in the top 10% don't consider themselves "rich".
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Of course. If you want to play games with numbers you can make them say anything you want. To reach the top 10% you need just over $100,000 in income. That isn't rich in most people's book, though it is upper middle class.
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      > That isn't rich in most people's book Depending on the part of the nation you're talking about. In much of the nation, exceeding 100k makes you unambiguously wealthy. In other areas, you'd have a hard time living anything more than a squarely middle class lifestyle on that. It's not about "playing games", it's that economic conditions vary so wildly across the nation that you can't accurately characterize what's "rich" and "poor" using the same scale everywhere. That's why I say that determining "rich" and "poor" is a difficult thing to do.

UweSchmidt 8y ago

I think the article is quite specific and articulate about the problem: "Employers of low-income workers listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television, and require psychometric tests as conditions of employment." This makes government surveillance (as serious as it is) feel like a distant, abstract issue.

AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
listen to phone calls, conduct drug tests, monitor closed-circuit television In Wall Street these were mandatory since many years ago. Source: was tested for drugs as a part of my employment screening.
mrosett 8y ago
They also pay low wages, don't provide paid sick days, fire you if you're late, provide less training, and so on. There's a lot of bad stuff about being poor; I'm not convinced that the privacy angle adds a lot. The sentence you quoted is framed to make some of those things sound worse than they are. "Listen to phone calls" - does that just refer to call centers recording calls for training/quality purposes? And "Monitor closed-circuit television" just is another way of saying "Many low-income employees work in places with security cameras." Finally, "require psychometric tests" sounds ominous, but a) college serves as a long psychometric test and b) interviews are informal psychometric tests. The unifying thread is that employers have to invest more in supervising low-productivity workers.
- UweSchmidt 8y ago
  Well, if you have been working in a place with security cameras, then that place has gotten worse recently, privacy-wise. 10 years ago they would dig out the surveillance tapes to try and identify a burglar. Now they might automatically detect employee behaviour: That's something that affecs poor warehouse workers. A lot of that creepy stuff is moving upwards to white collar jobs, does that weaken the argument the article makes or does it just mean the problem is expanding 'upwards'?
- clairity 8y ago
  > "...employers have to invest more in supervising low-productivity workers." why do you believe these workers are low-productivity? are they unworthy of dignity and privacy as a result? why do you believe the employers are qualified supervisors? have you never had a bad manager? might it be possible that the employers have no idea how to encourage productivity, and that low productivity is induced by a coercive and surveilled work environment? so many assumptions packed into those little words...
astura 8y ago
This is just complete BS, drug tests are mostly required for mid-to-high paying jobs, not your typical low income job. I've never had to take a drug test for any of the sub $10/hour jobs I've worked, I've had to take a drug test for every single software job I've ever worked. In fact, I have an acquaintance who was talking about quitting weed the other day and how difficult is is. When I asked her what made her quit she said "I'm sick of making only $30,000 a year and any jobs that pay over $30,000 a year are going to require a drug test." Having your work phone calls monitored is hardly something to get worked up about (you're using your phone for work...do you also get mad when your supervisors monitor your work in person?) and almost certainly not specific to low income employees. CCTV is literally everywhere, nobody low income works in my building and everyone's monitored with CCTV. Big whoop. Psychometric tests are very, very uncommon and not at all specific to low income employees, in fact, I'd argue the opposite (I mean... college is basically treated as a psychometric test)
- notfromhere 8y ago
  i've never heard of any place in tech that drug tested that didn't involve getting a security clearance. no one's drug testing people making 100k+, but drug tests for low-level jobs are far, far more common than you think.
  - astura 8y ago
    Sure your cool valley startup with a flip-flop wearing CEO isn't going to require a drug test (and probably not a formal background check), but buttoned up corporate America absolutely does as well as government and most companies who does business with government. So basically most non-small-companies outside of California. Employee drug testing got popular in the early-90s, it was even the topic of a Seinfeld joke. Though I hear its becoming less common in the last few years, and some have stopped testing for marijuana. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/employment-trends/2018/05/03/labor-shortage-businesses-mellow-over-hiring-pot-smokers/573710002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/careers/employment-tren... >There is no definitive data on how many companies conduct drug tests, though the Society for Human Resources Management found in a survey that 57 percent do so. Nor is there any recent data on how many have dropped marijuana from mandatory drug testing. >After the Drug-Free Workplace Act was enacted in 1988, amid concerns about cocaine use, drug testing spread to most large companies. All Fortune 500 companies now engage in some form of drug testing, according to Barry Sample, a senior director at Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest testing firms.

dictum 8y ago

> But on the commercial side, companies are a lot more interested in acquiring the personal, financial, and medical data of the rich That's not what VC's obsession about scale is all about. Volume matters. Millions of poor parents buying diapers can make an empire.

bluGill 8y ago

Poor people are at risk. Even though they are poor, they collectively have more money than the rich have collectively. Target a rich person for a million, or a million poor people for a dollar, either way you have the same amount in the end. There are different ways you target each, but there are plenty of scheme to choose from on both ends. (or even in the middle)

JohnFen 8y ago
> Even though they are poor, they collectively have more money than the rich have collectively. That entirely depends on how you define "rich" and "poor", which is a nontrivial thing to decide. In 2019 in the US, the top 10% wealthiest households collectively have more than twice as much money as the bottom 90% collectively. But lots of people in the top 10% don't consider themselves "rich".
- bluGill 8y ago
  Of course. If you want to play games with numbers you can make them say anything you want. To reach the top 10% you need just over $100,000 in income. That isn't rich in most people's book, though it is upper middle class.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > That isn't rich in most people's book Depending on the part of the nation you're talking about. In much of the nation, exceeding 100k makes you unambiguously wealthy. In other areas, you'd have a hard time living anything more than a squarely middle class lifestyle on that. It's not about "playing games", it's that economic conditions vary so wildly across the nation that you can't accurately characterize what's "rich" and "poor" using the same scale everywhere. That's why I say that determining "rich" and "poor" is a difficult thing to do.