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Coffee machine camera at Amazon warehouse raises concerns about surveillance
- shermantanktop 3y agoOr: Coffeepot vendor forgets to turn off stupid picture-taking feature which is unused at Amazon. But sure, clickbait titles are good bait for clicks.
- dotancohen 3y agoWhy does the article go to great lengths to portray the issue as a Muslim or East African migrant issue? Is there some wider context I'm missing?
- schnuri 3y ago> Founded in August of 2019, Sahan Journal is a nonprofit digital newsroom dedicated to reporting for immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota. https://sahanjournal.com/about-sahan-journal/ https://sahanjournal.com/about-sahan-journal/
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- dogleash 3y ago[flagged]
- jamiek88 3y agoOr instead of immediately lunching into your misanthropic fantasy you could simply click through to notice that it’s a publication that ‘Sahan Journal is a nonprofit digital newsroom dedicated to reporting for immigrants and communities of color in Minnesota’ but I guess ‘people be woke’ is much easier and pointless discourse ruining comment to throw out.
- jstarfish 3y agoIt's still outrage porn. "Cameras in the breakroom that record indiscriminately? Clearly, it's us they're targeting!"
- vuln 3y ago[flagged]
- jstarfish 3y agoOstensibly: > [...] East African workers, who comprise a sizable amount of Amazon’s Minnesota workforce. Local East African Muslim workers have a history of protesting the company’s wages and workplace conditions, including its handling of workers’ daily prayer practices and requests for time off for Muslim holidays.
- yedava 3y agoIf this were a Costco, sure, a benefit of doubt is warranted. But this is Amazon, who pioneered ever more dehumanizing ways of tracking employees.
- blibble 3y agowhy does it even have a camera? > Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said a malfunction caused the camera to take photos. wonder if a malfunction will make the security cameras "without microphones" start recording audio too
- jml7c5 3y agoThe very next sentence after the one you quoted is >The machine, provided by the vending supplier Canteen, features a touch screen and uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said.
- hx8 3y agoCould plausibly be incompetence. It would have limited spying capabilities. Could plausibly be denial to reduce backlash. I'd be interested in how widespread those coffee machines are. If I worked in a warehouse job with a strong anti-union position I'd assume the whole place was bugged. Even convincing people to act as if they are under surveillance would be a huge anti-union win.
- delichon 3y agoManagers surveilling employees is also known as management. It's a fairly long standing and widely accepted practice. Is it really very different when done with a webcam compared to a Mark I eyeball?
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoYes, because your Mark I eyeball can't record and reproduces images to post to social media or as evidence in a labor lawsuit.
- delichon 3y agoThe video can also be subpoenad and used to support the labor side of a lawsuit.
- phone8675309 3y ago_If_ it's known to exist by the person suing
- delichon 3y agoGood point. There's more accountability on both sides if everyone is aware of the recording.
- shermantanktop 3y agoUhhh, if you work an office job at a company of any significant size, your work laptop is loaded with monitoring software. Might be labeled “antivirus” or “threat detection” but it can and does watch everything you do. Perhaps there are union rules against that somewhere, but I doubt it.
- iraldir 3y agoNew version of caméra café (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam%C3%A9ra_Caf%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam%C3%A9ra_Caf%C3%A9) soon on Amazon Prime?
- histories 3y agoBy working on Amazon Warehouse you agree that your likeness can be used in a all-new premium TV show by Amazon Prime®! Subscribe now
- nicklecompte 3y ago> Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said a malfunction caused the camera to take photos. The machine, provided by the vending supplier Canteen, features a touch screen and uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said. But Carroll added that Amazon offers the coffee to employees free of charge and has no practical use for the camera. Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Was there an issue of people stealing coffee cards, so they used facial-ID matching? If so that seems like an expensive and authoritarian solution to a minor problem, and it doesn't make sense that the machine would do this if Amazon isn't using the cards. And it doesn't fully explain this: > An employee at the DMP1 Amazon Delivery Station was getting coffee on February 9 when he saw a button on the coffee vending machine’s touch screen that read “gallery.”....The employee pushed the button and came across around half a dozen random photos of the breakroom, according to Canaday. If the photos were close-ups of employees making coffee then I would buy the explanation that this was a feature Amazon forgot to disable. But if they are truly "random photos of the breakroom" then this explanation doesn't make sense to me.
- michaelmior 3y agoAlso, even if a camera is involved in purchasing a coffee with a card, why is there a gallery of these pictures?
- unglaublich 3y agoMaybe because it's some messy custom Android setup that was put together by an intern in 3 months and it piggybacks on the existing camera functionality.
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- mistermegabyte 3y agoThis is the answer. My work tablets are android based and taking pictures isn't supposed to be part of the workflow, but sometimes by using random button presses, you can accidentially bring up the camera/gallery (its supposed to be locked out, but our IT dept didn't do a good job of totally locking it out).
- scanr 3y agoThis is like the reverse of the Trojan Room Coffee pot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
- robomartin 3y agoAs someone who has had employees steal thousands of dollars in expensive specialized tools, I can tell you that people do behave badly behind closed doors and will lie to your face when confronted. For example, around 15 years ago we had these guys steal multiple crimpers ($400 to $800 ea.), CNC cutting tools ($100 to $400 ea.) and accessories in the thousands of dollars. Even seemingly stupid things, like 300 meter rolls of wire. We brought them into the conference room and confronted them with the situation by saying: We know you stole these items (presented a list). If you return them within the next couple of days you will be fired and no charges will be filed. They lied, said they did not steal a thing and were offended by the false accusation. We then played the surveillance videos on the conference room screen. Their tune changed dramatically to admitting what they did and asking forgiveness. Of course, this entire meeting was also recorded. They were given one opportunity to not lie, return what they stole and be fired. Instead, they were arrested. When you are working for a company, privacy isn't to be expected outside of the bathrooms. There are other issues as well. It is really unfortunate that, as a business owner, you are forced to think defensively in these matters. It really is. I am a firm believer in that people are basically good. Mainly because behaving badly in person (let's not talk about online, that's a different matter) can have serious consequences. In that category if you hire women --no reason not to-- you better have security cameras everywhere allowed by law. Why? Because of two things. First, women can be subject to serious sexual harassment. This has to be taken seriously and acted upon. Second, a woman can falsely acuse someone at work of this and absolutely ruin their lives. Video surveillance, if thorough enough, should provide one of the requisite safety layer. Of course, employees have to be made aware of these policies. I don't know if it is a legal requirement (it might be in some jurisdictions), it's the right thing to do. Sadly, we have to use such measures just because of a very small number of idiots who don't seem to have a brain.
- bombcar 3y agoI suspect if you had brought them one by one into the room the result might have been different. But perhaps it was an entire gang. It's so common it's a 20 year old joke at least: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Better-Stealing-Office-Supplies/dp/0836217578 https://www.amazon.com/Build-Better-Stealing-Office-Supplies...
- CodeWriter23 3y agoI’m certain they have cameras covering every square foot of every Amazon Warehouse and the loading bays too.
- ajross 3y agoThat's what I'm thinking. Surveillance of the workplace... just isn't that weird? Everyone does this. There's no particular expectation of privacy in a public workplace. I guess maybe one could argue that a breakroom should be excluded, but then that falls afoul of the analysis that sometimes people steal from vending machines and the devices need surveillance to prevent that.
- CodeWriter23 3y agoExclude bathrooms. Except for that camera in the autoflush fixtures.
- 4bpp 3y agoIf the camera was used for surveillance and the surveillance pictures got indexed by the gallery app, why were there only "half a dozen random photos"? One would expect something like scheduled pictures on some timer. A surveillance camera that over its lifetime took 6 blurry photos at random times does not seem like a meaningful surveillance tool, and "it actually took lots of pictures but only a handful of them accidentally wound up in the gallery" only works in a very lay understanding of technology. I know there is a strong human impulse to paint the situation in black and white as evil megacorp versus hapless but plucky workers uncovering its scheme, but despite the workers surely being the more sympathetic side in this dispute my first instinct would be to check if, along with the exposed gallery app, the machine doesn't also have an exposed camera app somewhere, which the labor organisers could have used to take these half a dozen pictures before "exposing" them to galvanise support. Second most likely theory would be some seldom-triggered code path in the coffee machine making it snap a diagnostic picture when it detects excessive vibration, intermittent power loss or some other disturbance.
- nix0n 3y agoAmazon doesn't really need video surveillance in the coffee room for union suppression. They just need the appearance of surveillance, hence the camera embedded in a device with no use for one, and a gallery left wide open. The paranoia is the point.
- WaitWaitWha 3y agoAlthough it is already noted that this was a third party vendor error, an other plausible use is Amazon's passion for automation (e.g., lights, air-conditioning), and squeeze a penny where possible and remove human interaction.
- crazygringo 3y agoThis is entirely a non-issue because: > The breakroom in question has two other cameras present: a security camera on the ceiling and another security camera attached to a self-checkout kiosk employees use when buying food, Canaday said. It's totally normal for workplaces to have cameras in public employee areas. The article tries to make a point: > He said that Amazon workers must feel free to talk about work in the breakroom without the fear of being surveilled. But there's no microphone in question here, the article even says so specifically. Conversations are not being snooped on here. And the camera is used for scanning cards to purchase coffee with, so it's not exactly nefarious. This is non-news.
- jes5199 3y agoare you recorded at your work?
- crazygringo 3y agoAbsolutely. At every large company I've ever worked at, there have been security cameras in every open work area, every hallway, every elevator, every common area. I've never heard of anybody complaining about it.
- jes5199 3y agocreepy
- justrealist 3y agoWhere do you work?
- theshrike79 3y agoMore creepy would be an office where anyone can just stroll in, grab stuff, walk out and we'd have no way of knowing who did it. Adding a security camera or two on the inside won't make stuff creepier.
- toss1 3y agoIIRC, the Internet's first webcam was a view of a coffee pot to let people remotely see if it was full/empty; now, the coffee pot camera is used for surveillance. Seems like a microcosm of the entire Internet.
- alsetmusic 3y ago> Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said a malfunction caused the camera to take photos. edit: carriage returns edit2: "hidden" How to deny that the hidden camera is a problem without directly addressing the fact that there's a hidden camera in the break room. Talking about this as a software mistake or anything other than "there's a hidden camera in the break room" is a failure.
- gwbas1c 3y ago> The breakroom in question has two other cameras present: a security camera on the ceiling and another security camera attached to a self-checkout kiosk employees use when buying food, Canaday said. Employees are aware of both security cameras, which are clearly visible and expected, Canaday said. The problem isn't that there's a camera in the breakroom, it's that the camera malfunctioned and took pictures that no one expected.
- philbin 3y ago[dead]
- r3trohack3r 3y agoMy views on "surveillance" have evolved over the years. I'm in favor of local, private, surveillance of private property. I'm not in favor of aggregating that surveillance in a way that allows warrantless search by government officials. Nowadays we have to define what we mean by warrantless search. In this context, I specifically mean any system or human associated with a government having access to the footage in any way prior to obtaining a warrant. This includes indexing the footage into a database accessible by law enforcement without a physical transfer of property. When it comes to my property, I have surveillance. It's all offline. It goes to a set of HDDs with redundant onsite backups. The system can survive a power outage for a _long_ time on battery backups, all the cameras are PoE and the storage device and wifi network for accessing the footage are all on a dedicated backup power circuit. If something happens on my property, I have recordings of it. Those recordings exist to protect my family and our assets. Proving my innocence, or helping us find and recover my kids, if we ever have "one bad day." I choose what to do with those recordings. The recordings self destruct on a timer. And it's not accessible without a warrant. You have to go through me to get them. This is in contrast to the form of surveillance I'm not in favor of, which appears to have been normalized over my lifetime in the U.S. The U.S. scoops up a huge amount of surveillance data into databases, and then focuses the conversation on whether or not those databases can be queried without a warrant. It's a mind bending situation where our government has managed to reclassify "search" as querying a database, claiming the search didn't happen when the information was indexed into the database. The physical analogue, for me, is a government official coming into your home once a day. They take a complete inventory of all of your property. They put that inventory into a folder, and then place the folder in a filing cabinet promising not to look at it unless they suspect its relevant to a crime. Then they claim that the search doesn't happen until the look in the filing cabinet. No good sir, the search happened when you aggregated the inventory of my home. There is a nuance here that this analogue uses _content_ and not _metadata_ - but I'd posit that for many privacy advocates that nuance isn't a meaningful distinction.
- daft_pink 3y agoDoes anyone else think that fact that they video tape us at every Whole Foods, Target, Walmart self-checkout means they could easily apply facial recognition and be recording our every purchase even if you pay cash.
- jstarfish 3y agoYes. Wear a mask next time you buy shovels and duct tape. But why stop there? They could watch you walk to your car and do ALPR there too.
- boring-alterego 3y agoOf course the company with a popular wire tap device would make the coffee machine spy on you.
- tussa 3y ago> The cameras cannot capture audio, she added. This is a classic political statement. Perhaps 100% correct. But notice how they didn't say "no audio is recorded in the room".
- Clubber 3y agoSome states require all parties to give consent to recording private conversations. I'm not sure if this is the reasoning or not. https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RECORDING-CONVERSATIONS-CHART.pdf https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/RECORDING...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- le-mark 3y agoI know someone who works part time at an Amazon warehouse and they have a real problem with people sleep walking through their shifts. We decided they must have the “do nothings” factored in to the equation. Considering how desperate they are for bodies, if a do nothing does something, then it’s a wash.