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I'm all for privacy and I cringe at the idea of workplace surveillance of the type described. That said, this article is loaded with false comparisons and poor
by ivraatiems 4y ago
I'm all for privacy and I cringe at the idea of workplace surveillance of the type described. That said, this article is loaded with false comparisons and poor analogies and just doesn't make its point very well. In general, it confuses "The Bad Government want to intentionally surveil you" with "idiot corporations chasing profits incidentally surveil you and think you're enough of an idiot to swallow it".
> 20 years ago, if you were eating your dinner under the unblinking eye of a video-camera, it was because you were in a supermax prison.
Or a shopping mall. Or an airport. Or a convenience store. Or the lobby of a hotel. Or a bank. Or about a million other places.
> Now, thanks to "luxury surveillance," you can get the same experience in your middle-class home with your Google, Apple or Amazon "smart" camera. Those cameras climbed the curve, going from prisons to schools to workplaces to homes.
This is a fundamentally inaccurate comparison. Nobody is forcing anyone to get a "smart" camera. I don't own one and I never will. Mandatory surveillance at work or in public is not the same issue as mandatory surveillance in private. This also totally ignores the fact that people aren't buying surveillance devices because they surveil. They're buying them for other reasons. Also, there's no "Them" out in the world making this all happen. It's natural evolution as technologies evolve and change. There's no conspiracy, just a lot of not particularly bright ideas colliding at once.
What we should be talking about are all the forms of surveillance people don't opt into - abuse of the cameras on your phone, laptop, etc. The scary thing, to me, is not "what will this technology you chose to acquire do when working as intended" but "how will forces you can't control subvert the things you have for other reasons."
- loudmax 4y agoI tend to agree with your point about voluntarily buying devices to allow corporations to spy on ourselves. Nobody is forcing you to get one of these things. At least not yet. I don't think the danger is that the government is going to force you to install a surveillance device in your house. The danger is that this will come from the free market. This is what the point of the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve. The surveillance starts with people who don't have the agency to opt out of it. We in the software and IT industry have a fair amount of choice when it comes to our work environments. If a potential employer insists on a screen recorder or keylogger, we can see these as warning flags and generally have options to go work someplace else. A lot of people don't have this luxury. If it's the choice between either working somewhere where your boss is timing your piss breaks or not being able to pay rent, that's really not much of a choice. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to envisage a possible future where you won't be able to participate in the modern economy if you don't agree to corporate surveillance. Not that it's impossible to opt out, just as it's not impossible to live off the electric grid today if you really want to. Hopefully the free market will drive idiot corporations that time their employees piss breaks out of business. Clever corporations that are smarter about their surveillance could still be around though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]