11 ms·

Welcome to the era of the hyper-surveilled office

143 points by Hoasi 4y ago

davidkuennen 4y ago
I'm convinced that keeping track if your employee is visibly working or not is so fundamentally wrong. Especially in an office setting. Just look at the output. Nothing more. Does the employee provide value at the end of the day or not. That's important. Not hours or anything else.
- ddingus 4y ago
  I wonder how it is that basic idea seems lost amidst a sea of increasingly painful ways to monitor and control. The need to control is greater than... I don't know. I lack that need, instead needing people to be great people more, and they can't be great when the environment they work in snuffs out greatness.
- dspillett 4y ago
  > That's important. Not hours or anything else. Not to the bean counters. If they can get a good job out of you while distracted 25% of the time they think they could get 25% more out of you for no extra cost if they beat that distraction out of you. It is one of those double standards many companies have: if you are needed to work extra “you are salaried, not paid by the hour, a bit of flexibility is normal and expected” but if you don't do 37.5 hours one week or are seen to be relaxing too much “your contract clearly says that you are paid to be actively on the job for X time, no less”. Luckily our current regime is far more sensible about this sort of thing, considerate even, though before that buy-out this sort of issue was on the list of reasons I was days away from walking out & burning a few bridges along the way.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  It is an excuse for bad management that cannot set goals and verify if they are reached or not. To be honest you should immediately exploit that for your own career. Office surveillance exploiters wouldn't hold back as well. Tell them you want set goals and no surveillance, make your employment conditional to that. If that doesn't work go to the next higher instance. If it is only the CEO or owner and he supports it, change the company. Otherwise make an offer to replace the manager or being elevated to the same position with defined goals. Often just a little resistance is enough.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Especially in an office setting. Why especially then?
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Why especially then? Because some office workers think they are special in regards to their output being more creative and cognitive rather than physical and therefore should not be measured in the same fashion as the number of widgets per hour made by a factory worker or tiles per hour laid by a handyman for example, even though ironically, modern SW tools like Jira and processes like Agile & Scrum attempt to do just that, turn cognitive work into factory style repetitive assembling/plumbing work. Which most of it is :) B.R.B, gotta wrap up those story points for the end of the sprint. /s, but only barely
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Hum... The only thing the tools do is documenting what is done and what needs to be done. All the commoditization of laborers is done by people. And yeah, commoditization of factory workers is a large problem too, and the commoditization of the skilled professions (WTF, a real oxymoron) is a "what the hell are you even thinking?" situation.
- jka 4y ago
  As a manager, would you worry about the stability of your own job role if you didn't have insight into the productivity of your reports? Would you worry what would happen to you and the company if one of your reports introduced a serious bug or security flaw into the software? (note: I think these concerns can -- and should -- be addressed in other ways that don't require intrusion into employees' day-to-day activities, but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place)
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    >but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place Problem is, they are still proxies. Proxies are great at satisfying feelings, but proxies are by no means a guarantee they will reflect what they try to capture. There are no end of examples of perverse incentives showcasing how a metric can "feel" great, but end up being a big bag of nothing if not detrimental. Other than that, even thinking along the terms of "well they must have a reason" is a great way of introducing slippery slopes all the way to extremism. I'd have a hard time arguing any answer would justify becoming more and more extremist and trying to deny people privacy and autonomy to such a degree.
    - jka 4y ago
      > Other than that, even thinking along the terms of "well they must have a reason" is a great way of introducing slippery slopes all the way to extremism. It's possible I misunderstand what you're saying here, but I think I agree; I wasn't intending to justify managerial surveillance, only to understand and elaborate why it might be happening. Without understanding the cause(s), the tendency of organizations will, I'd guess, instead be to patch over any problems that arise -- the process equivalent of adding warning signs instead of fixing a dangerous bridge. The solution in an effective employment marketplace is to build organizations that avoid the root causes entirely and thus attract (effective, motivated) employees and build desire in others to work at similar workplaces -- while perhaps reducing organizational running costs at the same time as a side-effect.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Actual output is often hard to measure so we instead gravitate toward various easy-to-measure metrics - hoping that these are proxies for the real thing. The quantitative appearance of such metrics is intoxicating, particularly when it allows us to avoid thinking deeply about what would actually make a business better.
  - flatiron 4y ago
    Also gives them an easy reason to get rid of anyone.
rado 4y ago
The article is ironically behind a cookie wall.
emptyparadise 4y ago
Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too? >Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression. Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare.
- derwiki 4y ago
  > Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash
  - headsoup 4y ago
    'The “robot” installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called “Manna”, version 1.0*.'
    - chazu 4y ago
      That story was truly a horrific vision of the future.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Nah, in retail, we used to have this software known as "secret shoppers." If they didn't see someone smiling, the store or department would be docked points on its evaluation, and you'd be hearing about it from your boss and boss's boss. Now all of us WFH minions below the lowly programmers will be subject to a smiling rictus as our cameras, microphones, and keyloggers determine productivity scores, work morale, and redundancy scores for the next layoff.
3np 4y ago
http://archive.today/SGfHh http://archive.today/SGfHh
- hashtag-til 4y ago
  Came here for this. Thanks!
nonrandomstring 4y ago
- altgeek 4y ago
  "You'll work off that cake in the ACID MINES" - Homer Simpson, s12e07
- coutego 4y ago
  They only drifted "leftwards" after 2008 when they started lobbying for governments to bail out banks. Once this was done, they went back to "orthodoxy".
- bojangleslover 4y ago
  "Dark satanic mills"
  - dipsplacemat 4y ago
    It's from a hymn describing the environmental destruction of the industrial revolution: And did those feet in ancient time \ Walk upon England’s mountains green? \ And was the holy Lamb of God \ On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine \ Shine forth upon our clouded hills? \ And was Jerusalem builded here \ Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold: \ Bring me my arrows of desire: \ Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold! \ Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, \ Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand \ Till we have built Jerusalem \ In England’s green and pleasant land.
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      Damn this sounds like William Blake
    - nonrandomstring 4y ago
      As I understood it Blake's Jerusalem didn't literally anticipate the inhumanity of the northern mills (child labour etc - which the phrase has since come to signify), but the orthodoxy of church, schools, law, and halls of Apollonian indoctrination which he saw as obstacles to a more fully human reality. He was, to use a term from Christopher Hitchens, an anti-theist in the fullest sense, against all theisms including those we would recognise today as "technological orthodoxies". While also arguably the worlds first multi-media artist, he eschewed the paper 'tygers' as Promethean follies. Rather prescient I would say.
SethMurphy 4y ago
Don't forget the home. With the ubiquity of security cameras privacy is eroding even in private. I am struggling now with properly placing cameras in an apartment and balancing safety, security, and privacy in a family environment.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Why do you want to place cameras in your apartment in the first place? Maybe one camera for the entrance, if you have reasons to be paranoid (I was thinking about it for myself, because of weird landlord with second keys), but why more cameras? edit: one further reason for myself I remembered, watching the small kids from the smartphone, while going out for some minutes. But in the end I never set it up
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Catching acts of domestic violence would be a reason. To prevent he said/she said instances. NB: I don't agree with the increasing paranoia, it's just devil's advocate.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      Ok, if you have to worry about that, than the solution is probably rather to get a divorce. (are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence?)
      - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
        Divorce alone barely ever works, it's not as simple as that. I'd rather not stir the hornet's nest any further as the topic itself is far more delicate than that. It's just an example of why an increasingly distrustful populace might opt to secure themselves through home surveillance. >are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence? Depends entirely on the context and where you live. There are no universal surveillance laws. There are also social aspects outside the realm of court why one would opt to do so.
    - 4y ago
tomas_nort 4y ago
UweSchmidt 4y ago
This needs to be illegal. In Germany a lot of that stuff is illegal already or needs to be approved by the Betriebsrat (work council) but can come in through the backdoor as little known features of common software anyway.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
In the EU, or any country with strong privacy protection legislation, data of this sort is a liability.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nixpulvis 4y ago
Security cameras at work are debatably legal under many states eavesdropping laws as I interpret the text. Of course INAL, and many places have better reason to have cameras, e.g. to curb shoplifting, but a corporate office really isn't one of those places. What am I going to do, steal some paperclips?
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Even in those states it's only illegal if you're not aware or don't consent. Very easy to add a "you consent to our surveillance" clause to your contract. Pretty good odds a lot of us have them in there already if we read carefully.
  - nixpulvis 4y ago
    You can and should negotiate terms of employment before signing. The more we stand up for ourselves the less we will slide down this slippery slope.
- lodovic 4y ago
  I always wonder - who will be looking at the footage? Your manager is obviously too busy, so there must be some department of workers checking on other workers? Then, ownership. How can you be sure this video footage is kept safe and private? Who owns it and for how long can they keep it? Imagine a teenage child entering the wfh room while you're on a break, I can image wanting to have that video removed immediately. Also - a home office which is surveilled this way must be decorated completely neutral; you might have an incorrect world map on the wall or a product made by a competitor in view, or perhaps a beach picture of your family to which people can be very sensitive. I have so many objections against this.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
moolcool 4y ago
This is what scares me about Metaverse. Initially I was like "Oh good, Facebook is blowing all of their resources on a bad idea everyone hates. I hope this goes badly for them!". Then I realized, the target audience for Metaverse won't have a choice-- it'll be a virtual office where people can work from home while under constant surveillance.
- Balgair 4y ago
  As an aside, I think I finally understand why Mark is so bent out of shape for the metaverse: His security detail. Last I heard, Mark spends ~$24M/yr. on his security detail. He's got very thick glass installed in his house. 2 foot thick, but I can't confirm that. It's not just bullet proof, it's RPG proof, or something. The optical distortions are quite real through that much silicon and plastic. I'm not privy to the details on FB internally, but I imagine that the guys you're paying ~$67,000/day will keep you pretty cloistered from threats, either real or potential. Now, combine that with issues like the Dictator's Information Problem. As such, I'd speculate that Mark doesn't really get to talk with honest people all that much. Mark ain't dumb, he knows it, but he also thinks all the stuff his security team is telling him is real too. A team that doesn't stay employed if the threats disappear. So, in Mark's mind one solution is to 'air gap' the people from him via the metaverse. He's 'with them' in the same visual spaces, but his security won't be compromised.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    "Hey, Hiro, you want to try some Snow Crash"?
totetsu 4y ago
I recently had to install chrom'ium' on my work pc, because all the mainstream browsers were auto installing an un-removable tracking extension via some domain policy :(. I'm sure my manager gets some report at the end of the month detailing how many hours I had a news.ycombinator.com tab open
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  Why even use you work pc for non-work purposes? If you want to browse HN, why not just browse it on your phone?
  - philote 4y ago
    Because phones are small and horrible to type on.
- switch007 4y ago
  Same here. It’s touted as a security add on but it also just happens to do lots and lots of tracking and reports for management
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    There are portable versions of browsers that you don't need to install and work just out of any folder.
baremetal 4y ago
imagine thinking this is tolerable. i might get checked up on a couple of times by the customer im framing houses for, and another two times by the city inspector. no HR, no surveillance, no office politics.
newsclues 4y ago
I worked in a telco call centre. Everything was recorded on our computers, whee as t we said on phones and they had cameras in the office to watch us, plus human supervisors. And yet everyone still flaunted all the rules: we were drunk and on drugs, we ate and had our cellphones. Rules exist to selectively enforce against people who are not liked.
bwestergard 4y ago
I'm a software developer working remotely most of the time. My unionized colleagues and I pushed for and won an agreement to prevent our employer from surveilling us in this manner. Several other recently organized companies have gotten similar agreements. https://twitter.com/WeBuildNPR/status/1522586389774221313?cxt=HHwWgoCy5aSQqKEqAAAA https://twitter.com/WeBuildNPR/status/1522586389774221313?cx...
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  INAL, but it seems that the wording in the agreement leaves open the use of surveillance software on employees, as long as it's not for the purpose of "evaluating the employee's work product (i.e. job duties assigned to the employee), the time an employee took to complete their work, or disciplining an employee in protected concerted activity." The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product). Why not prohibit the user of such software on employees entirely?
  - bwestergard 4y ago
    You are right that the language could be stronger. This was the outcome after a few rounds of proposals and counter-proposals. I believe that in the context of an overall agreement with a "just cause" provision, which we have tentative agreement on, we don't have to worry about "bossware" at all. > The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product). This article will be incorporated into a larger collective bargaining agreement that specifies people can only be disciplined or terminated for "just cause". The most common "just cause" for termination is a failure to perform one's job duties. Our employer could not use information gleaned through software surveillance to demonstrate just cause, much as police officers can't introduce evidence obtained illegally in court. > or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working That would fall under "time taken to complete the work".
    - 4y ago
fartcannon 4y ago
Any devs here work on stuff like this? Why?
palisade 4y ago
I worked at a place once where we got a memo that asked everyone to stop clipping nails and farting because the microphones installed in our desks were picking these noises up. The memo even added that if you need to fart please go to the bathroom. It wasn't a joke email, they were serious. Oh, also not many people realize this but CCTV cameras all have the capability to convey audio captured via an internal microphone. It just depends on whether they have hooked the wires up to enable this feature. But, the innate ability is there. And, the CCTV software the guards use have the ability to store, retrieve and play this back alongside the video playback.
- brk 4y ago
  Most CCTV cameras used in professional installations do not have any kind of on-board microphone. Many have an audio input option for an external mic, but it is very rarely used.
- lkxijlewlf 4y ago
  I would record one and put it on a 15 minute loop on my phone, then set the phone close to the mic. In between I'd have it play some pink noise.
- herodoturtle 4y ago
  One of the greatest benefits of working from home - which is seldom celebrated - is the ability to fart at one’s leisure without having to try silence it.
  - palisade 4y ago
    We need a new law. The Freedom To Have Our Farts Go UnHeard Act. ;D
    - rubyist5eva 4y ago
      No no no, the name of it needs to be an acronym as well. The Freedom-to Always Rip True Act.
pluc 4y ago
Get this. I worked for the company that produces most of the porn on the Internet. You know, the porn you can go to any torrent site and download for free within 10 minutes (and that statement has been true for as long as there has been an Internet and BitTorrent). That company periodically took screenshots of all (ALL!) their employees' workstations. They monitor internal network for suspicious traffic and, until COVID happened, they did not let anyone work remotely. Never understood what they were afraid of. Their content is already plastered all over the Internet.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  You have to understand the primary purpose of that whole industry, which is not what most people think, in order to answer the question about what they were “afraid of”. Let me just put it this way, you are correct that the concern with employee monitoring makes absolutely no sense, because that’s not the right perspective, assumption of motivation.
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    What are you trying to say?
aa-jv 4y ago
I recently had a manager insist that I install some MDM-like software on my laptop so that it could be tracked and managed remotely. I said, "okay I'll do that, but then I'm never going to put that laptop on my home network, or use it on any network I may frequent outside of the office, so I'll just leave my laptop on my work desk instead". The point, of course, is the same reasoning behind IT policies that don't let people install stuff on work computers: if you're going to access my computer remotely, I won't trust it one single bit, so it doesn't belong on my home network. This changed their mind, quick. All it took was a little resistance and "good for the goose and the gander" mindset, and the manager droid 'got it'. No, I won't be letting you spy on my family ..
- hajhatten 4y ago
  I simply uninstalled ours. IT couldn't understand why. Very thankful I have an understanding manager.
  - aa-jv 4y ago
    IT should never be treated as more senior to Development, imho. Sure, IT guy, you can put that software on there - but I reserve the right to Ghidra it into dysfunction.
    - 6keZbCECT2uB 4y ago
      Management has the authority to set policies on how work-provided technology is used since they can fire you for not following those policies (constrained by law). Between IT and developers, this isn't a fully-ordered relation since IT has jurisdiction to enforce those policies, and developers have jurisdiction on ensuring that software meets needed quality. If your management has ill-conceived policies that prevent you from being productive at work, includes everything from McAfee hobbled NTFS to being scheduled for 9 hours of meetings in an 8 hour workday, then leave and find somewhere more productive to work or accept that you're being paid to be unproductive.
      - 4y ago
benfrain 4y ago
What is the reality here? If a company adds MDM software to a laptop they have given you for work and you use it at home on your home network. Is it easy enough for them (in theory) to get on to the network and look on your kids or partners devices? Or is that tin hat thinking?
- emteycz 4y ago
  I wouldn't call it easy - they might be able to see what is publicly shared, but shouldn't have any non-public access to the other computers/devices. But most of all, they wouldn't dare. Mistakes and individual excesses happen, though.
poulpy123 4y ago
The great human-robot convergence. AI and robotics are getting closer to humans and humans (especially workers) are pushed closer to robots

143 points by Hoasi 4y ago

I'm convinced that keeping track if your employee is visibly working or not is so fundamentally wrong. Especially in an office setting. Just look at the output. Nothing more. Does the employee provide value at the end of the day or not. That's important. Not hours or anything else.

ddingus 4y ago
I wonder how it is that basic idea seems lost amidst a sea of increasingly painful ways to monitor and control. The need to control is greater than... I don't know. I lack that need, instead needing people to be great people more, and they can't be great when the environment they work in snuffs out greatness.
dspillett 4y ago
> That's important. Not hours or anything else. Not to the bean counters. If they can get a good job out of you while distracted 25% of the time they think they could get 25% more out of you for no extra cost if they beat that distraction out of you. It is one of those double standards many companies have: if you are needed to work extra “you are salaried, not paid by the hour, a bit of flexibility is normal and expected” but if you don't do 37.5 hours one week or are seen to be relaxing too much “your contract clearly says that you are paid to be actively on the job for X time, no less”. Luckily our current regime is far more sensible about this sort of thing, considerate even, though before that buy-out this sort of issue was on the list of reasons I was days away from walking out & burning a few bridges along the way.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
It is an excuse for bad management that cannot set goals and verify if they are reached or not. To be honest you should immediately exploit that for your own career. Office surveillance exploiters wouldn't hold back as well. Tell them you want set goals and no surveillance, make your employment conditional to that. If that doesn't work go to the next higher instance. If it is only the CEO or owner and he supports it, change the company. Otherwise make an offer to replace the manager or being elevated to the same position with defined goals. Often just a little resistance is enough.
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Especially in an office setting. Why especially then?
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Why especially then? Because some office workers think they are special in regards to their output being more creative and cognitive rather than physical and therefore should not be measured in the same fashion as the number of widgets per hour made by a factory worker or tiles per hour laid by a handyman for example, even though ironically, modern SW tools like Jira and processes like Agile & Scrum attempt to do just that, turn cognitive work into factory style repetitive assembling/plumbing work. Which most of it is :) B.R.B, gotta wrap up those story points for the end of the sprint. /s, but only barely
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Hum... The only thing the tools do is documenting what is done and what needs to be done. All the commoditization of laborers is done by people. And yeah, commoditization of factory workers is a large problem too, and the commoditization of the skilled professions (WTF, a real oxymoron) is a "what the hell are you even thinking?" situation.
jka 4y ago
As a manager, would you worry about the stability of your own job role if you didn't have insight into the productivity of your reports? Would you worry what would happen to you and the company if one of your reports introduced a serious bug or security flaw into the software? (note: I think these concerns can -- and should -- be addressed in other ways that don't require intrusion into employees' day-to-day activities, but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place)
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >but I raise them because I think they're part of the reason (along with compliance, perhaps in some cases?) why these systems are introduced in the first place Problem is, they are still proxies. Proxies are great at satisfying feelings, but proxies are by no means a guarantee they will reflect what they try to capture. There are no end of examples of perverse incentives showcasing how a metric can "feel" great, but end up being a big bag of nothing if not detrimental. Other than that, even thinking along the terms of "well they must have a reason" is a great way of introducing slippery slopes all the way to extremism. I'd have a hard time arguing any answer would justify becoming more and more extremist and trying to deny people privacy and autonomy to such a degree.
  - jka 4y ago
    > Other than that, even thinking along the terms of "well they must have a reason" is a great way of introducing slippery slopes all the way to extremism. It's possible I misunderstand what you're saying here, but I think I agree; I wasn't intending to justify managerial surveillance, only to understand and elaborate why it might be happening. Without understanding the cause(s), the tendency of organizations will, I'd guess, instead be to patch over any problems that arise -- the process equivalent of adding warning signs instead of fixing a dangerous bridge. The solution in an effective employment marketplace is to build organizations that avoid the root causes entirely and thus attract (effective, motivated) employees and build desire in others to work at similar workplaces -- while perhaps reducing organizational running costs at the same time as a side-effect.
osigurdson 4y ago
Actual output is often hard to measure so we instead gravitate toward various easy-to-measure metrics - hoping that these are proxies for the real thing. The quantitative appearance of such metrics is intoxicating, particularly when it allows us to avoid thinking deeply about what would actually make a business better.
- flatiron 4y ago
  Also gives them an easy reason to get rid of anyone.

rado 4y ago

The article is ironically behind a cookie wall.

emptyparadise 4y ago

Feels like every damn thing that happens gets used as a pretext to enable more and more surveillance. Will we need job boards specifically for jobs that don't do surveillance too? >Last year Fujitsu, a Japanese technology group, unveiled AI software which promises to gauge employees’ concentration based on their facial expression. Just need software that punishes employees who aren't happy enough at work, then we'll have a proper nightmare.

derwiki 4y ago
> Everything about their employees is monitored and tracked, down to individual finger and eye movements, to prevent waste and track performance. All emails that are sent out include an estimate of how long they should take to read. Go to fast, you get scolded for not paying attention. Go too slow, you get scolded for inefficiency. Get it just right? You get scolded for being a smartass. —- Snowcrash
- headsoup 4y ago
  'The “robot” installed at this first Burger-G restaurant looked nothing like the robots of popular culture. It was not hominid like C-3PO or futuristic like R2-D2 or industrial like an assembly line robot. Instead it was simply a PC sitting in the back corner of the restaurant running a piece of software. The software was called “Manna”, version 1.0*.'
  - chazu 4y ago
    That story was truly a horrific vision of the future.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
Nah, in retail, we used to have this software known as "secret shoppers." If they didn't see someone smiling, the store or department would be docked points on its evaluation, and you'd be hearing about it from your boss and boss's boss. Now all of us WFH minions below the lowly programmers will be subject to a smiling rictus as our cameras, microphones, and keyloggers determine productivity scores, work morale, and redundancy scores for the next layoff.

3np 4y ago

http://archive.today/SGfHh http://archive.today/SGfHh

hashtag-til 4y ago
Came here for this. Thanks!

nonrandomstring 4y ago

altgeek 4y ago
"You'll work off that cake in the ACID MINES" - Homer Simpson, s12e07
coutego 4y ago
They only drifted "leftwards" after 2008 when they started lobbying for governments to bail out banks. Once this was done, they went back to "orthodoxy".
bojangleslover 4y ago
"Dark satanic mills"
- dipsplacemat 4y ago
  It's from a hymn describing the environmental destruction of the industrial revolution: And did those feet in ancient time \ Walk upon England’s mountains green? \ And was the holy Lamb of God \ On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine \ Shine forth upon our clouded hills? \ And was Jerusalem builded here \ Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my bow of burning gold: \ Bring me my arrows of desire: \ Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold! \ Bring me my chariot of fire. I will not cease from mental fight, \ Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand \ Till we have built Jerusalem \ In England’s green and pleasant land.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Damn this sounds like William Blake
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    As I understood it Blake's Jerusalem didn't literally anticipate the inhumanity of the northern mills (child labour etc - which the phrase has since come to signify), but the orthodoxy of church, schools, law, and halls of Apollonian indoctrination which he saw as obstacles to a more fully human reality. He was, to use a term from Christopher Hitchens, an anti-theist in the fullest sense, against all theisms including those we would recognise today as "technological orthodoxies". While also arguably the worlds first multi-media artist, he eschewed the paper 'tygers' as Promethean follies. Rather prescient I would say.

SethMurphy 4y ago

Don't forget the home. With the ubiquity of security cameras privacy is eroding even in private. I am struggling now with properly placing cameras in an apartment and balancing safety, security, and privacy in a family environment.

hutzlibu 4y ago
Why do you want to place cameras in your apartment in the first place? Maybe one camera for the entrance, if you have reasons to be paranoid (I was thinking about it for myself, because of weird landlord with second keys), but why more cameras? edit: one further reason for myself I remembered, watching the small kids from the smartphone, while going out for some minutes. But in the end I never set it up
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Catching acts of domestic violence would be a reason. To prevent he said/she said instances. NB: I don't agree with the increasing paranoia, it's just devil's advocate.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Ok, if you have to worry about that, than the solution is probably rather to get a divorce. (are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence?)
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      Divorce alone barely ever works, it's not as simple as that. I'd rather not stir the hornet's nest any further as the topic itself is far more delicate than that. It's just an example of why an increasingly distrustful populace might opt to secure themselves through home surveillance. >are secret cameras a legal way to get evidence? Depends entirely on the context and where you live. There are no universal surveillance laws. There are also social aspects outside the realm of court why one would opt to do so.
  - 4y ago

tomas_nort 4y ago

UweSchmidt 4y ago

This needs to be illegal. In Germany a lot of that stuff is illegal already or needs to be approved by the Betriebsrat (work council) but can come in through the backdoor as little known features of common software anyway.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

In the EU, or any country with strong privacy protection legislation, data of this sort is a liability.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nixpulvis 4y ago

Security cameras at work are debatably legal under many states eavesdropping laws as I interpret the text. Of course INAL, and many places have better reason to have cameras, e.g. to curb shoplifting, but a corporate office really isn't one of those places. What am I going to do, steal some paperclips?

giraffe_lady 4y ago
Even in those states it's only illegal if you're not aware or don't consent. Very easy to add a "you consent to our surveillance" clause to your contract. Pretty good odds a lot of us have them in there already if we read carefully.
- nixpulvis 4y ago
  You can and should negotiate terms of employment before signing. The more we stand up for ourselves the less we will slide down this slippery slope.
lodovic 4y ago
I always wonder - who will be looking at the footage? Your manager is obviously too busy, so there must be some department of workers checking on other workers? Then, ownership. How can you be sure this video footage is kept safe and private? Who owns it and for how long can they keep it? Imagine a teenage child entering the wfh room while you're on a break, I can image wanting to have that video removed immediately. Also - a home office which is surveilled this way must be decorated completely neutral; you might have an incorrect world map on the wall or a product made by a competitor in view, or perhaps a beach picture of your family to which people can be very sensitive. I have so many objections against this.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

moolcool 4y ago

This is what scares me about Metaverse. Initially I was like "Oh good, Facebook is blowing all of their resources on a bad idea everyone hates. I hope this goes badly for them!". Then I realized, the target audience for Metaverse won't have a choice-- it'll be a virtual office where people can work from home while under constant surveillance.

Balgair 4y ago
As an aside, I think I finally understand why Mark is so bent out of shape for the metaverse: His security detail. Last I heard, Mark spends ~$24M/yr. on his security detail. He's got very thick glass installed in his house. 2 foot thick, but I can't confirm that. It's not just bullet proof, it's RPG proof, or something. The optical distortions are quite real through that much silicon and plastic. I'm not privy to the details on FB internally, but I imagine that the guys you're paying ~$67,000/day will keep you pretty cloistered from threats, either real or potential. Now, combine that with issues like the Dictator's Information Problem. As such, I'd speculate that Mark doesn't really get to talk with honest people all that much. Mark ain't dumb, he knows it, but he also thinks all the stuff his security team is telling him is real too. A team that doesn't stay employed if the threats disappear. So, in Mark's mind one solution is to 'air gap' the people from him via the metaverse. He's 'with them' in the same visual spaces, but his security won't be compromised.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  "Hey, Hiro, you want to try some Snow Crash"?

totetsu 4y ago

I recently had to install chrom'ium' on my work pc, because all the mainstream browsers were auto installing an un-removable tracking extension via some domain policy :(. I'm sure my manager gets some report at the end of the month detailing how many hours I had a news.ycombinator.com tab open

pmoriarty 4y ago
Why even use you work pc for non-work purposes? If you want to browse HN, why not just browse it on your phone?
- philote 4y ago
  Because phones are small and horrible to type on.
switch007 4y ago
Same here. It’s touted as a security add on but it also just happens to do lots and lots of tracking and reports for management
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  There are portable versions of browsers that you don't need to install and work just out of any folder.

baremetal 4y ago

imagine thinking this is tolerable. i might get checked up on a couple of times by the customer im framing houses for, and another two times by the city inspector. no HR, no surveillance, no office politics.

newsclues 4y ago

I worked in a telco call centre. Everything was recorded on our computers, whee as t we said on phones and they had cameras in the office to watch us, plus human supervisors. And yet everyone still flaunted all the rules: we were drunk and on drugs, we ate and had our cellphones. Rules exist to selectively enforce against people who are not liked.

bwestergard 4y ago

I'm a software developer working remotely most of the time. My unionized colleagues and I pushed for and won an agreement to prevent our employer from surveilling us in this manner. Several other recently organized companies have gotten similar agreements. https://twitter.com/WeBuildNPR/status/1522586389774221313?cxt=HHwWgoCy5aSQqKEqAAAA https://twitter.com/WeBuildNPR/status/1522586389774221313?cx...

pmoriarty 4y ago
INAL, but it seems that the wording in the agreement leaves open the use of surveillance software on employees, as long as it's not for the purpose of "evaluating the employee's work product (i.e. job duties assigned to the employee), the time an employee took to complete their work, or disciplining an employee in protected concerted activity." The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product). Why not prohibit the user of such software on employees entirely?
- bwestergard 4y ago
  You are right that the language could be stronger. This was the outcome after a few rounds of proposals and counter-proposals. I believe that in the context of an overall agreement with a "just cause" provision, which we have tentative agreement on, we don't have to worry about "bossware" at all. > The company could still use such software on employees and claim it was doing so for security purposes, for instance, or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working (without evaluating the work product). This article will be incorporated into a larger collective bargaining agreement that specifies people can only be disciplined or terminated for "just cause". The most common "just cause" for termination is a failure to perform one's job duties. Our employer could not use information gleaned through software surveillance to demonstrate just cause, much as police officers can't introduce evidence obtained illegally in court. > or maybe even just to make sure the employee was working That would fall under "time taken to complete the work".
  - 4y ago

fartcannon 4y ago

Any devs here work on stuff like this? Why?

palisade 4y ago

I worked at a place once where we got a memo that asked everyone to stop clipping nails and farting because the microphones installed in our desks were picking these noises up. The memo even added that if you need to fart please go to the bathroom. It wasn't a joke email, they were serious. Oh, also not many people realize this but CCTV cameras all have the capability to convey audio captured via an internal microphone. It just depends on whether they have hooked the wires up to enable this feature. But, the innate ability is there. And, the CCTV software the guards use have the ability to store, retrieve and play this back alongside the video playback.

brk 4y ago
Most CCTV cameras used in professional installations do not have any kind of on-board microphone. Many have an audio input option for an external mic, but it is very rarely used.
lkxijlewlf 4y ago
I would record one and put it on a 15 minute loop on my phone, then set the phone close to the mic. In between I'd have it play some pink noise.
herodoturtle 4y ago
One of the greatest benefits of working from home - which is seldom celebrated - is the ability to fart at one’s leisure without having to try silence it.
- palisade 4y ago
  We need a new law. The Freedom To Have Our Farts Go UnHeard Act. ;D
  - rubyist5eva 4y ago
    No no no, the name of it needs to be an acronym as well. The Freedom-to Always Rip True Act.

pluc 4y ago

Get this. I worked for the company that produces most of the porn on the Internet. You know, the porn you can go to any torrent site and download for free within 10 minutes (and that statement has been true for as long as there has been an Internet and BitTorrent). That company periodically took screenshots of all (ALL!) their employees' workstations. They monitor internal network for suspicious traffic and, until COVID happened, they did not let anyone work remotely. Never understood what they were afraid of. Their content is already plastered all over the Internet.

frankfrankfrank 4y ago
You have to understand the primary purpose of that whole industry, which is not what most people think, in order to answer the question about what they were “afraid of”. Let me just put it this way, you are correct that the concern with employee monitoring makes absolutely no sense, because that’s not the right perspective, assumption of motivation.
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  What are you trying to say?

aa-jv 4y ago

I recently had a manager insist that I install some MDM-like software on my laptop so that it could be tracked and managed remotely. I said, "okay I'll do that, but then I'm never going to put that laptop on my home network, or use it on any network I may frequent outside of the office, so I'll just leave my laptop on my work desk instead". The point, of course, is the same reasoning behind IT policies that don't let people install stuff on work computers: if you're going to access my computer remotely, I won't trust it one single bit, so it doesn't belong on my home network. This changed their mind, quick. All it took was a little resistance and "good for the goose and the gander" mindset, and the manager droid 'got it'. No, I won't be letting you spy on my family ..

hajhatten 4y ago
I simply uninstalled ours. IT couldn't understand why. Very thankful I have an understanding manager.
- aa-jv 4y ago
  IT should never be treated as more senior to Development, imho. Sure, IT guy, you can put that software on there - but I reserve the right to Ghidra it into dysfunction.
  - 6keZbCECT2uB 4y ago
    Management has the authority to set policies on how work-provided technology is used since they can fire you for not following those policies (constrained by law). Between IT and developers, this isn't a fully-ordered relation since IT has jurisdiction to enforce those policies, and developers have jurisdiction on ensuring that software meets needed quality. If your management has ill-conceived policies that prevent you from being productive at work, includes everything from McAfee hobbled NTFS to being scheduled for 9 hours of meetings in an 8 hour workday, then leave and find somewhere more productive to work or accept that you're being paid to be unproductive.
    - 4y ago

benfrain 4y ago

What is the reality here? If a company adds MDM software to a laptop they have given you for work and you use it at home on your home network. Is it easy enough for them (in theory) to get on to the network and look on your kids or partners devices? Or is that tin hat thinking?

emteycz 4y ago
I wouldn't call it easy - they might be able to see what is publicly shared, but shouldn't have any non-public access to the other computers/devices. But most of all, they wouldn't dare. Mistakes and individual excesses happen, though.

poulpy123 4y ago

The great human-robot convergence. AI and robotics are getting closer to humans and humans (especially workers) are pushed closer to robots