6 ms·

I think not uproaring is a very rational response to the threat model: - You already have little expectation of privacy at work. Your computer has a sysadmin a

by geofft 7y ago

I think not uproaring is a very rational response to the threat model: - You already have little expectation of privacy at work. Your computer has a sysadmin account for the company, and probably not a sysadmin account for you. Your Springsteen tickets are logged and potentially cached in the printer's memory. At most places, coworkers can see what you're doing in person. So there's no strong reason to expect more crackdown on occasional personal use of work time/resources than there has been in the past. - There are easy options (especially for people who get an NYT salary) for private work and private computing: doing things at home, using your cell phone (not on the corporate network, no corporate login, and probably too small to see on the cameras), taking a quick break to a nearby cafe, printing your tickets at FedEx, etc. (Many of those are much more anonymous than possible at work, e.g., leave your phone at your desk, email to printandgo@fedex.com from a throwaway account, and pay in coins.) - The stated rationale—responding to violent attacks—makes sense, is quite worthwhile individually in expectation (even a slight reduction in your chance of getting killed is quite valuable), and if believed implies insufficient staffing to effect a panopticon. There's probably just one security guard downstairs, at most. - There's other personally beneficial reasons to want cameras at work, e.g., helping you (whichever side you find yourself on!) in harassment claims. In particular I'd actively want low-resolution cameras, enough to identify people but not enough to read standard-sized text on paper or screen, covering every office or conference room with a door that closes. My own workplace has cameras everywhere other than the bathrooms. We're told this at orientation, and also told that nobody is actively watching them. This seems totally fine to me. If there were security cameras in the bathrooms / privacy rooms / etc., or in my apartment, or in hotel rooms, or anything else, that would be quite different.

Noumenon72 7y ago
Waiting at the auto repair shop today, a woman came in asking to speak to the manager because she believed the shop had removed the tires from her rental car and replaced them with different rims. The manager was able to appeal to the fact that there were security cameras directly watching the bay to get her to file a police report instead. I talked to my mechanic later, a young black man. He said another customer once accused him of stealing the emblem off his BMW, and the cameras cleared him. Cameras really can protect employees who do a good job.
- pm90 7y ago
  This is an interesting take. I think the nuance here is that we're talking about very disparate industries. Blue collar work may benefit from such kind of monitoring, while white collar work may not (maybe it does, I don't have an opinion).
- Spooky23 7y ago
  The camera is a prop there. No policeman is going to do more than smile and nod at the crazy lady accusing a mechanic of stealing tires from a rental car.
IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
- as evidenced by this article, and some of the posts here, people who haven’t gotten used to permanent surveillance do have an expectation of privacy. And cameras are different than people watching you because it’s one-way, and at scale. - allowing people to do minor personal tasks at work is expected in a professional career such as journalism. It’s not a sweatshop, peoples’ productivity doesn’t neatly correlate with hours worked anyway. And you’re expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway, so this should cut both ways. - shooting happen within just a few minutes and the effect of cameras is debatable, especially if there is no armed and trained security. - The NYT is a sort of high value target. I would not expect to get into their offices without proper ID. - Is there some epidemic of false harassment claims everyone is worried about? As far as I know there was one case that had consequences at the Times (Glenn Thrush) and he admitted to the behavior. Also like 90% of harassment is verbal, which cameras don’t capture. The rest seems to happen in hotel rooms and bars, which these cameras also don’t address.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Expectation of privacy does not depend on you getting used to it. A workplace can be monitored by the business that's paying for it and is a good idea to reduce risk and litigation. Nobody cares about a few personal tasks at work but it's important to have video evidence when something serious occurs. And yes there are false harassment claims, and having even a single case avoided because of footage is worth it for both the person and company involved.
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  > And you’re expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway Really? I'd never agree to that. It's definitely not universal, certainly not tolerated in France for example I'm sure.
  - briandear 7y ago
    If you are a reporter, news doesn’t follow business hours.
  - vidarh 7y ago
JudgeWapner 7y ago
> helping you (whichever side you find yourself on!) Consider the case where a supervisor makes unwanted physical contact with a subordinate. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the company would hand over evidence to the subordinate if s/he made the claim. If they act in the best interest of the company, they would delete the footage and reprimand the superior. What company would hand over evidence that could cost them an expensive harassment suit? Cameras can absolutely be a liability [1]: > a partner at a big law firm came up afterward to say that his firm had taken out the security cameras in its stairwells. “We picked up so much sexual activity on the cameras, after midnight, that it was a liability to have the videotape in our possession [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-16/the-truth-about-sex-at-work https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-16/the-truth...
- bsder 7y ago
  Where do these people work? And how do I get a job there? Seriously, though. Even when I was a cooperative engineering student (ie. low 20's ages, lot's of partying, everybody pretty far from home for 3 months), people weren't fucking in the stairwells. Good grief. Most of the places I worked, I generally have difficulty coming up with a single person who I would even want to have sex with.
  - couchand 7y ago
    Thank you for your contribution, you have certainly helped to elevate the conversation.
    - bsder 7y ago
      I am expressing (hopefully humorous) disbelief in the provided claims given my own experience. As you apparently don't have relevant experience, you seem to be unable to add or subtract authenticity to the claims. I suspect an uncharitable answer is: "One or more of our senior partners likes to accost people in the stairwells." A more charitable explanation is that it could be a more "New York" thing in that people are at the office, drunk, late for various reasons (office parking is a good spot to park the car for late events; hit the office before riding mass transit for 30-40 minutes for a pit stop; etc.)
Spooky23 7y ago
I would assume that the retention schedule and process around the video is designed to benefit to protect the employers interests. “Nobody watching” is meaningless. Amazon offers facial recognition as a service, and many tools exist to identify and classify data in video. The computer is watching, and it will be configured to see whatever is in the interest of the folks controlling the machine.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  Maybe we should replace will be configured with can be configured?
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    That will happen, once. People who sue want all information forever. People who get sued want to keep nothing.
vidarh 7y ago
> Your computer has a sysadmin account for the company, and probably not a sysadmin account for you. I know that's the case some places, but I've never worked anywhere where that was the case. And that includes a company with 10k employees. It's nowhere near universal. That is also much less of a restriction than it used to be: Most of us have personal computers on our body most of the time, as you point out. But expectation of privacy is largely down to how you choose your society to be. Many countries have restrictions on what employers are legally able to do with that access for that reason. E.g. Norway has strict limitations on to what extent employers can even look at your corporate e-mail account without your consent because there is considered to be an extent of expectation of privacy there too, and tries to strike a balance between protecting that and protecting the needs of the employer. A lot of Norwegian labour law around privacy boils down to whether employees have a legitimate reason for reducing the expectation of privacy, and how to minimize that invasion, rather than accepting that "you already have little expectation of privacy at work" is a valid excuse for eroding it further. Part of the rationale here is that people spend sufficient time at work that it is unrealistic to expect there to be no co-mingling of personal life and work, and so there is a need to create limited spheres of privacy even at work, and it is rare that this conflicts with legitimate employer concerns (and "you should spend 100% of your time exclusively on work tasks" is not considered legitimate) in ways that can't be reasonably resolved. I find it troublesome how many people don't even question whether or not this kind of erosion of privacy serves legitimate purposes. > At most places, coworkers can see what you're doing in person. There is a very different dynamic there, though, which you can easily test: People have different levels of awareness of a person looking in their direction vs. a camera. If I had a manager standing behind me all the time, I'd quit. A camera is better in some respects (you don't have someone standing there) and worse in some respects (it is actually there all the time and you don't know when someone is looking) Whether or not it's truly invasive largely boils down to how it is handled. Active monitoring is very different from knowing someone might look at the recordings to look for evidence for in the case of specific types of events, for example.
- teddyh 7y ago
  > Most of us have personal computers on our body most of the time, as you point out. Most don’t have a sysadmin account for that computer either.

by geofft 7y ago

Noumenon72 7y ago

Waiting at the auto repair shop today, a woman came in asking to speak to the manager because she believed the shop had removed the tires from her rental car and replaced them with different rims. The manager was able to appeal to the fact that there were security cameras directly watching the bay to get her to file a police report instead. I talked to my mechanic later, a young black man. He said another customer once accused him of stealing the emblem off his BMW, and the cameras cleared him. Cameras really can protect employees who do a good job.

pm90 7y ago
This is an interesting take. I think the nuance here is that we're talking about very disparate industries. Blue collar work may benefit from such kind of monitoring, while white collar work may not (maybe it does, I don't have an opinion).
Spooky23 7y ago
The camera is a prop there. No policeman is going to do more than smile and nod at the crazy lady accusing a mechanic of stealing tires from a rental car.

IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago

- as evidenced by this article, and some of the posts here, people who haven’t gotten used to permanent surveillance do have an expectation of privacy. And cameras are different than people watching you because it’s one-way, and at scale. - allowing people to do minor personal tasks at work is expected in a professional career such as journalism. It’s not a sweatshop, peoples’ productivity doesn’t neatly correlate with hours worked anyway. And you’re expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway, so this should cut both ways. - shooting happen within just a few minutes and the effect of cameras is debatable, especially if there is no armed and trained security. - The NYT is a sort of high value target. I would not expect to get into their offices without proper ID. - Is there some epidemic of false harassment claims everyone is worried about? As far as I know there was one case that had consequences at the Times (Glenn Thrush) and he admitted to the behavior. Also like 90% of harassment is verbal, which cameras don’t capture. The rest seems to happen in hotel rooms and bars, which these cameras also don’t address.

manigandham 7y ago
Expectation of privacy does not depend on you getting used to it. A workplace can be monitored by the business that's paying for it and is a good idea to reduce risk and litigation. Nobody cares about a few personal tasks at work but it's important to have video evidence when something serious occurs. And yes there are false harassment claims, and having even a single case avoided because of footage is worth it for both the person and company involved.
jimmaswell 7y ago
> And you’re expected to be readily available outside of work hours anyway Really? I'd never agree to that. It's definitely not universal, certainly not tolerated in France for example I'm sure.
- briandear 7y ago
  If you are a reporter, news doesn’t follow business hours.
- vidarh 7y ago

JudgeWapner 7y ago

> helping you (whichever side you find yourself on!) Consider the case where a supervisor makes unwanted physical contact with a subordinate. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the company would hand over evidence to the subordinate if s/he made the claim. If they act in the best interest of the company, they would delete the footage and reprimand the superior. What company would hand over evidence that could cost them an expensive harassment suit? Cameras can absolutely be a liability [1]: > a partner at a big law firm came up afterward to say that his firm had taken out the security cameras in its stairwells. “We picked up so much sexual activity on the cameras, after midnight, that it was a liability to have the videotape in our possession [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-16/the-truth-about-sex-at-work https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-16/the-truth...

bsder 7y ago
Where do these people work? And how do I get a job there? Seriously, though. Even when I was a cooperative engineering student (ie. low 20's ages, lot's of partying, everybody pretty far from home for 3 months), people weren't fucking in the stairwells. Good grief. Most of the places I worked, I generally have difficulty coming up with a single person who I would even want to have sex with.
- couchand 7y ago
  Thank you for your contribution, you have certainly helped to elevate the conversation.
  - bsder 7y ago
    I am expressing (hopefully humorous) disbelief in the provided claims given my own experience. As you apparently don't have relevant experience, you seem to be unable to add or subtract authenticity to the claims. I suspect an uncharitable answer is: "One or more of our senior partners likes to accost people in the stairwells." A more charitable explanation is that it could be a more "New York" thing in that people are at the office, drunk, late for various reasons (office parking is a good spot to park the car for late events; hit the office before riding mass transit for 30-40 minutes for a pit stop; etc.)

Spooky23 7y ago

I would assume that the retention schedule and process around the video is designed to benefit to protect the employers interests. “Nobody watching” is meaningless. Amazon offers facial recognition as a service, and many tools exist to identify and classify data in video. The computer is watching, and it will be configured to see whatever is in the interest of the folks controlling the machine.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
Maybe we should replace will be configured with can be configured?
- Spooky23 7y ago
  That will happen, once. People who sue want all information forever. People who get sued want to keep nothing.

vidarh 7y ago

> Your computer has a sysadmin account for the company, and probably not a sysadmin account for you. I know that's the case some places, but I've never worked anywhere where that was the case. And that includes a company with 10k employees. It's nowhere near universal. That is also much less of a restriction than it used to be: Most of us have personal computers on our body most of the time, as you point out. But expectation of privacy is largely down to how you choose your society to be. Many countries have restrictions on what employers are legally able to do with that access for that reason. E.g. Norway has strict limitations on to what extent employers can even look at your corporate e-mail account without your consent because there is considered to be an extent of expectation of privacy there too, and tries to strike a balance between protecting that and protecting the needs of the employer. A lot of Norwegian labour law around privacy boils down to whether employees have a legitimate reason for reducing the expectation of privacy, and how to minimize that invasion, rather than accepting that "you already have little expectation of privacy at work" is a valid excuse for eroding it further. Part of the rationale here is that people spend sufficient time at work that it is unrealistic to expect there to be no co-mingling of personal life and work, and so there is a need to create limited spheres of privacy even at work, and it is rare that this conflicts with legitimate employer concerns (and "you should spend 100% of your time exclusively on work tasks" is not considered legitimate) in ways that can't be reasonably resolved. I find it troublesome how many people don't even question whether or not this kind of erosion of privacy serves legitimate purposes. > At most places, coworkers can see what you're doing in person. There is a very different dynamic there, though, which you can easily test: People have different levels of awareness of a person looking in their direction vs. a camera. If I had a manager standing behind me all the time, I'd quit. A camera is better in some respects (you don't have someone standing there) and worse in some respects (it is actually there all the time and you don't know when someone is looking) Whether or not it's truly invasive largely boils down to how it is handled. Active monitoring is very different from knowing someone might look at the recordings to look for evidence for in the case of specific types of events, for example.

teddyh 7y ago
> Most of us have personal computers on our body most of the time, as you point out. Most don’t have a sysadmin account for that computer either.