7 ms·

I built a lighting system for <hotel chain you've heard of> to save energy by turning off hallway lights when not in use. The environmental aspect was great and

I built a lighting system for <hotel chain you've heard of> to save energy by turning off hallway lights when not in use. The environmental aspect was great and saved hundreds of thousands in electricity. Someone eventually realized that the mesh network I built to connect all the lights together and report usage statistics could also be used to track employees moving throughout the building and catch them taking unauthorized breaks in the stairwell, so that's its main purpose now. I'm a lot more paranoid about privacy these days.

SoftTalker 4y ago
Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. It's one of the reasons I've grown more disillusioned with computer tech over the years.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  I had this realization in stages. 1. Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. 2. Some software comes already designed for surveillance purposes up front. 2a. This includes plenty of well-known mass appeal software; importantly, the customer-facing marketing copy and the investor pitch can present a completely different value proposition. 3. Software doesn't become used for surveillance or abuse by accident; there are actual human beings who make a decision to use it in this fashion, or commission it for this purpose. 3a. The "misguided programmers harming people by trying to solve social problems with technology" meme is dumb for many reasons, but it's also distracting (possibly purposefully so) from the fact that it's not software, or people who coded up the software, that are the primary culprits. The coders that were too naive or too self-interested to refuse work or blow the whistle may have some responsibility, but we should start talking about the people who made the decisions to commission or repurpose technology for bad purposes.
  - colecut 4y ago
    The problem is that "bad" is subjective and I'm sure most of the people making these decisions don't agree that they are being "bad"
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      That's fair, but the 3 and 3a. is not about whether a decision is bad or not, but about attribution. It makes no sense to blame "technology" or engineers in news stories for being used in some way, but completely ignore the people who ordered and bankrolled it to be used in that way.
    - scaramanga 4y ago
      Why would anybody care what they think?
  - leidenfrost 4y ago
    Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them. If the piece of software you created is unbiased and unopinionated, it can be used for evil purposes. If you make the software deliberatedly against that, you have to (a) take measures without the company knowing (b) have the manpower to do it alone while still reaching development goals (c) those measures can be undone by another developer that cares less that you. After all, software big enough is collective by nature. It's also unfair to us to think that we're responsible for any misuse as if we were mechanical engineers creating weapons for war
    - gnat 4y ago
      "Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them." You can quit. Literally, there is something you can do. If your boss asks you to write or adapt something to surveil, then you can quit. There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company, perhaps consequences that you won't enjoy as much as your current job stability and paycheck, but the choice is always there.
      - lasfter 4y ago
        > There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company This is why unions are so important, even in a field like software engineering. If you quit on your own, the company may not care. But using the threat of strikes, workers can demand better conditions for themselves and more ethical directions for their company.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        Why are tech workers so resistant to organized action? Their owner employers sure are organizing adversarially in a multitude of ways in the open and behind closed doors
        4y ago
  - birdyrooster 4y ago
    Don't worry, Free Software will save us. /s
  - svieira 4y ago
    See also _Surveillance too cheap to meter_ https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/7/262077-surveillance-too-cheap-to-meter/ https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/7/262077-surveillance-to... > To stop the surveillance, [they] would have to get their equipment suppliers to make changes; they would have to change their own back-office systems; they would have to reformulate customer contracts so they would not rely on the data being available in case of disputes; and so on. > [It] would cost [them] more money to stop the surveillance of their customers than to continue doing it. > That is quite literally what "surveillance too cheap to meter" means.
  - amelius 4y ago
    It's also why employers prefer to hire young people over more experienced people, because the latter actually understand what's going on and might object.
  - nasmorn 4y ago
    I think to combat this you need to have laws like in Germany where this is pretty much explicitly illegal. We cannot put the technology back in the bottle
- dathinab 4y ago
  > Almost all software which is why it's less of a technical problem and more of a social problem people need to realize that with how the technology is today we can't afford to rely on marked self regulation for a lot of things especially wrt. privacy protection it just fundamentally does not work (Or in other words, such usage of employee surveillance should be just plain out forbidden by law not just to be used but to be deployed)
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    In order to do that, people are going to have to go to the ballot boxes and vote. And when they do that, they're going to discover that there are no good options there. Then they're going realise that they have to create those options, and there's no grown-up to do it for them now. Then it dawns on them that they are not even members of any political organisations, nor are they in a union. It's like they've lived their whole lives without ever even having used their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom to join political organisations, freedom to create political organisations, freedom to stand for office, or even considered using them before in any meaningful way, so it's like a nation of infants contemplating the idea of taking the wheel of a car. It's terrifying.
  - beefield 4y ago
    I have this feeling that with the increasing complexity and sophistication of the technical environment/tools we have in our hands, there is an increasing amount of people simply unable to cope with everyday challenges of modern society. Of course, there have always been these kind of people, but in the old days they were easily identified groups of disabled and elderly people, who, most importantly, understood also themselves that they need help. The bleak future I see that increasing amount of normal people with normal intelligence are just going to be financially destroyed, all while they themselves believe that they are fully qualified and justified to decide whether their money is "invested" in the next cryptard scheme, sent to a nigerian prince to get millions, or put in a crappy health insurance covering accidents once in a blue moon, instead of those damn government elite experts taking their money and actually providing health care and pension. And after they are destroyed, they become even more hostile against the "elite experts" who just seem to be laughing at their faces "told you so". (To be extremely clear here: I believe intelligence is a highly multi-dimensional thing. And yu can be intelligent only in very limited dimensions. so practically all of us - me very much included - are morons in most of the dimensions. So I am not pointing here to any specific group, but all of us are vulnerable in some dimension. I may be able to above average avoiding certain kind of scams, but I am for sure vulnerable - even laughable stupid looking afterwards - for face-to-face friendly scams. Which, luckily to me, are typically not expensive.) Unfortunately I have no good solution anywhere in sight. The best idea I have so far is to mock online the idiots who think Ayn Rand was a genius. I have to admit, though, that even that is likely to be useless even in the best case, so most of the time I try to just bite my lip.
- GeertB 4y ago
  In many cases, software is like a tool. I provided a screwdriver: generally it's used for good, but sometimes it's used for assembling a bomb. By providing the screwdriver, I have no influence on how it's used. For me, it's important that most software I write is free software with few restrictions on its use. That way, I ensure that my screwdriver is available for all good purposed, even though I acknowledge that I cannot prevent it from being able to be used for evil. It's a tricky balance, but I trust that the good uses of new tools outweigh the evil. A war on screwdrivers won't prevent missiles targeting civilians.
- pimlottc 4y ago
  The term often used for this is “dual-use”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
- WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  >"can be abused or co-opted" I tend to believe it, "will be." All tech will eventually be used to try to gain an advantage in war and surveillance. I don't think there's a way to prevent it.
- amelius 4y ago
  It's not just computer tech. Obviously, advances in say molecular biology can cause much more trouble down the line.
IAmGraydon 4y ago
How could they tell who exactly triggered the system? Also, they didn't already have security cameras?
Symbiote 4y ago
What was the requirement? My apartment building has lights in the hallways that are only on when needed, but they just use a basic infrared sensor.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  * Minimize BOM cost. Only 1 in N lights would actually have the full sensor complement, so they needed to communicate. * Minimize installation cost. They just wanted to plug into a light socket, not run network cabling. * Push data logs to a central server. They didn't want to send a tech physically to each lightbulb to get data for e.g. energy usage certifications. plus other obvious requirements. All of that made it really easy to just stick a beacon tag inside employee badges and measure the RSSI from the mesh lightbulbs (since they already tracked that to discover who their physical neighbors were). Instant employee monitoring.
  - mhh__ 4y ago
    Are these hallways for staff only?
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      Not as far as I was ever aware. They were intended for guest areas.
      - mhh__ 4y ago
        So why is the RSSI thing worth having?
        mlyle 4y ago
        Because by measuring multiple RSSI you can trilaterate and track employees relatively accurately. If an employee lingers somewhere unusual, you can have a manager ask them why.
Negitivefrags 4y ago
What is so bad about catching people taking unauthorised breaks?
- eCa 4y ago
  Would you like to live in a society where the laws are the same as they are now, but it’s impossible to break them and not be caught? (I know I’m jumping right to where the slippery slope ends.)
  - Negitivefrags 4y ago
    If we lived in such a society I would imagine we would be a bit more careful as we drafted laws. It would also be a lot more equitable due to the lack of selective enforcement.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      Even if getting there from the current state of affairs by rigorously enforcing laws to the letter is possible, it would come with a very heavy price on people while the laws get reformed.
  - kleinsch 4y ago
    Taking the other side - you’d rather live in the society we have today where policies/laws are selectively enforced based on whether cops/supervisors have a good relationship with you, are biased re your race/gender, etc?
    - jjj123 4y ago
      Perfectly executed laws would also have biased outcomes, likely worse than the current system. There’s a good quote that goes something like “the law treats all men equally: the rich man and the poor man are punished the same for stealing bread to feed their family.”
      - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wlesieutre 4y ago
Systems like that are commercially available now, even as far as pitching "we don't know what to do with all the data but by golly we're collecting it for you." For location tracking they specifically called out things like equipment carts, but it was implied that it could track other bluetooth devices.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I did this almost a decade ago. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't commercially available now. Heck, the system I wrote might even be one of them for all I know.
geenew 4y ago
Need to know <=> Need to log
someweirdperson 4y ago
> used to track employees moving throughout the building and catch them taking unauthorized breaks There's probably more illegally unpaid overtime than there's unauthorized (boss doesn't like) breaks. The data can likely prove that, too.
naikrovek 4y ago
anything you write that can be used to pry into someone's life will be used to pry into someone's life. without fail. that's the rule I've always followed.
Havoc 4y ago
Wow. Well at least it was 100% good faith your side. Can’t really help it that some tools can be dual used
pannSun 4y ago
> I built a lighting system for <hotel chain you've heard of> I am sick and tired of how often extremely pertinent information has to be neutered in this way. And I am utterly disgusted at how the legal system is used to protect scummy corporations like this unnamed hotel chain. I wish we had strong laws that prevented employers from even thinking about threatening employees for talking about their work. Or collective bargaining to make sure employers don't have the leverage to impose such one-sided contracts.

SoftTalker 4y ago

Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. It's one of the reasons I've grown more disillusioned with computer tech over the years.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
I had this realization in stages. 1. Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. 2. Some software comes already designed for surveillance purposes up front. 2a. This includes plenty of well-known mass appeal software; importantly, the customer-facing marketing copy and the investor pitch can present a completely different value proposition. 3. Software doesn't become used for surveillance or abuse by accident; there are actual human beings who make a decision to use it in this fashion, or commission it for this purpose. 3a. The "misguided programmers harming people by trying to solve social problems with technology" meme is dumb for many reasons, but it's also distracting (possibly purposefully so) from the fact that it's not software, or people who coded up the software, that are the primary culprits. The coders that were too naive or too self-interested to refuse work or blow the whistle may have some responsibility, but we should start talking about the people who made the decisions to commission or repurpose technology for bad purposes.
- colecut 4y ago
  The problem is that "bad" is subjective and I'm sure most of the people making these decisions don't agree that they are being "bad"
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    That's fair, but the 3 and 3a. is not about whether a decision is bad or not, but about attribution. It makes no sense to blame "technology" or engineers in news stories for being used in some way, but completely ignore the people who ordered and bankrolled it to be used in that way.
  - scaramanga 4y ago
    Why would anybody care what they think?
- leidenfrost 4y ago
  Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them. If the piece of software you created is unbiased and unopinionated, it can be used for evil purposes. If you make the software deliberatedly against that, you have to (a) take measures without the company knowing (b) have the manpower to do it alone while still reaching development goals (c) those measures can be undone by another developer that cares less that you. After all, software big enough is collective by nature. It's also unfair to us to think that we're responsible for any misuse as if we were mechanical engineers creating weapons for war
  - gnat 4y ago
    "Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them." You can quit. Literally, there is something you can do. If your boss asks you to write or adapt something to surveil, then you can quit. There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company, perhaps consequences that you won't enjoy as much as your current job stability and paycheck, but the choice is always there.
    - lasfter 4y ago
      > There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company This is why unions are so important, even in a field like software engineering. If you quit on your own, the company may not care. But using the threat of strikes, workers can demand better conditions for themselves and more ethical directions for their company.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        Why are tech workers so resistant to organized action? Their owner employers sure are organizing adversarially in a multitude of ways in the open and behind closed doors
        4y ago
- birdyrooster 4y ago
  Don't worry, Free Software will save us. /s
- svieira 4y ago
  See also _Surveillance too cheap to meter_ https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/7/262077-surveillance-too-cheap-to-meter/ https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/7/262077-surveillance-to... > To stop the surveillance, [they] would have to get their equipment suppliers to make changes; they would have to change their own back-office systems; they would have to reformulate customer contracts so they would not rely on the data being available in case of disputes; and so on. > [It] would cost [them] more money to stop the surveillance of their customers than to continue doing it. > That is quite literally what "surveillance too cheap to meter" means.
- amelius 4y ago
  It's also why employers prefer to hire young people over more experienced people, because the latter actually understand what's going on and might object.
- nasmorn 4y ago
  I think to combat this you need to have laws like in Germany where this is pretty much explicitly illegal. We cannot put the technology back in the bottle
dathinab 4y ago
> Almost all software which is why it's less of a technical problem and more of a social problem people need to realize that with how the technology is today we can't afford to rely on marked self regulation for a lot of things especially wrt. privacy protection it just fundamentally does not work (Or in other words, such usage of employee surveillance should be just plain out forbidden by law not just to be used but to be deployed)
- scaramanga 4y ago
  In order to do that, people are going to have to go to the ballot boxes and vote. And when they do that, they're going to discover that there are no good options there. Then they're going realise that they have to create those options, and there's no grown-up to do it for them now. Then it dawns on them that they are not even members of any political organisations, nor are they in a union. It's like they've lived their whole lives without ever even having used their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, freedom to join political organisations, freedom to create political organisations, freedom to stand for office, or even considered using them before in any meaningful way, so it's like a nation of infants contemplating the idea of taking the wheel of a car. It's terrifying.
- beefield 4y ago
  I have this feeling that with the increasing complexity and sophistication of the technical environment/tools we have in our hands, there is an increasing amount of people simply unable to cope with everyday challenges of modern society. Of course, there have always been these kind of people, but in the old days they were easily identified groups of disabled and elderly people, who, most importantly, understood also themselves that they need help. The bleak future I see that increasing amount of normal people with normal intelligence are just going to be financially destroyed, all while they themselves believe that they are fully qualified and justified to decide whether their money is "invested" in the next cryptard scheme, sent to a nigerian prince to get millions, or put in a crappy health insurance covering accidents once in a blue moon, instead of those damn government elite experts taking their money and actually providing health care and pension. And after they are destroyed, they become even more hostile against the "elite experts" who just seem to be laughing at their faces "told you so". (To be extremely clear here: I believe intelligence is a highly multi-dimensional thing. And yu can be intelligent only in very limited dimensions. so practically all of us - me very much included - are morons in most of the dimensions. So I am not pointing here to any specific group, but all of us are vulnerable in some dimension. I may be able to above average avoiding certain kind of scams, but I am for sure vulnerable - even laughable stupid looking afterwards - for face-to-face friendly scams. Which, luckily to me, are typically not expensive.) Unfortunately I have no good solution anywhere in sight. The best idea I have so far is to mock online the idiots who think Ayn Rand was a genius. I have to admit, though, that even that is likely to be useless even in the best case, so most of the time I try to just bite my lip.
GeertB 4y ago
In many cases, software is like a tool. I provided a screwdriver: generally it's used for good, but sometimes it's used for assembling a bomb. By providing the screwdriver, I have no influence on how it's used. For me, it's important that most software I write is free software with few restrictions on its use. That way, I ensure that my screwdriver is available for all good purposed, even though I acknowledge that I cannot prevent it from being able to be used for evil. It's a tricky balance, but I trust that the good uses of new tools outweigh the evil. A war on screwdrivers won't prevent missiles targeting civilians.
pimlottc 4y ago
The term often used for this is “dual-use”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology
WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
>"can be abused or co-opted" I tend to believe it, "will be." All tech will eventually be used to try to gain an advantage in war and surveillance. I don't think there's a way to prevent it.
amelius 4y ago
It's not just computer tech. Obviously, advances in say molecular biology can cause much more trouble down the line.

IAmGraydon 4y ago

How could they tell who exactly triggered the system? Also, they didn't already have security cameras?

Symbiote 4y ago

What was the requirement? My apartment building has lights in the hallways that are only on when needed, but they just use a basic infrared sensor.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
* Minimize BOM cost. Only 1 in N lights would actually have the full sensor complement, so they needed to communicate. * Minimize installation cost. They just wanted to plug into a light socket, not run network cabling. * Push data logs to a central server. They didn't want to send a tech physically to each lightbulb to get data for e.g. energy usage certifications. plus other obvious requirements. All of that made it really easy to just stick a beacon tag inside employee badges and measure the RSSI from the mesh lightbulbs (since they already tracked that to discover who their physical neighbors were). Instant employee monitoring.
- mhh__ 4y ago
  Are these hallways for staff only?
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    Not as far as I was ever aware. They were intended for guest areas.
    - mhh__ 4y ago
      So why is the RSSI thing worth having?
      - mlyle 4y ago
        Because by measuring multiple RSSI you can trilaterate and track employees relatively accurately. If an employee lingers somewhere unusual, you can have a manager ask them why.

Negitivefrags 4y ago

What is so bad about catching people taking unauthorised breaks?

eCa 4y ago
Would you like to live in a society where the laws are the same as they are now, but it’s impossible to break them and not be caught? (I know I’m jumping right to where the slippery slope ends.)
- Negitivefrags 4y ago
  If we lived in such a society I would imagine we would be a bit more careful as we drafted laws. It would also be a lot more equitable due to the lack of selective enforcement.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    Even if getting there from the current state of affairs by rigorously enforcing laws to the letter is possible, it would come with a very heavy price on people while the laws get reformed.
- kleinsch 4y ago
  Taking the other side - you’d rather live in the society we have today where policies/laws are selectively enforced based on whether cops/supervisors have a good relationship with you, are biased re your race/gender, etc?
  - jjj123 4y ago
    Perfectly executed laws would also have biased outcomes, likely worse than the current system. There’s a good quote that goes something like “the law treats all men equally: the rich man and the poor man are punished the same for stealing bread to feed their family.”
    - 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

wlesieutre 4y ago

Systems like that are commercially available now, even as far as pitching "we don't know what to do with all the data but by golly we're collecting it for you." For location tracking they specifically called out things like equipment carts, but it was implied that it could track other bluetooth devices.

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I did this almost a decade ago. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't commercially available now. Heck, the system I wrote might even be one of them for all I know.

geenew 4y ago

Need to know <=> Need to log

someweirdperson 4y ago

> used to track employees moving throughout the building and catch them taking unauthorized breaks There's probably more illegally unpaid overtime than there's unauthorized (boss doesn't like) breaks. The data can likely prove that, too.

naikrovek 4y ago

anything you write that can be used to pry into someone's life will be used to pry into someone's life. without fail. that's the rule I've always followed.

Havoc 4y ago

Wow. Well at least it was 100% good faith your side. Can’t really help it that some tools can be dual used

pannSun 4y ago

> I built a lighting system for <hotel chain you've heard of> I am sick and tired of how often extremely pertinent information has to be neutered in this way. And I am utterly disgusted at how the legal system is used to protect scummy corporations like this unnamed hotel chain. I wish we had strong laws that prevented employers from even thinking about threatening employees for talking about their work. Or collective bargaining to make sure employers don't have the leverage to impose such one-sided contracts.