As a prelude to what i'll type below I hate these things. They are not useful and I believe they are detrimental to employee productivity through the "panoptico

As a prelude to what i'll type below I hate these things. They are not useful and I believe they are detrimental to employee productivity through the "panopticon" idea of management. There's no need in my eyes for regulating this or getting in quarrel over workers rights. You, the employee, sign a contract with the employer to perform some work for some compensation. If the employer wishes to run this type of strategy on their own hardware I do not see a problem with this. You can, and should, find a job that respects you as a worker. What we are seeing here is the MBA-style spreadsheet management turned into software. This "panopticon" management increases turnover rate and decreases productivity. I have personally seen it. I worked IT in a company that had this software (I was a low level sysadmin and had no control). People would spend an inordinate amount of time finding ways to hide their activity instead of just quickly doing what they had to do and moving on. The solution isn't to complain, or call for regulation, but rather just leave your job. If the software isn't being installed on your computer then the company is completely okay to do this, no matter how damaging it is to their bottom line through subsequent lost activity.