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Often when discussing civil liberties, and protections thereof, the argument is "it's a choice you don't have to work for them and they're not the government th
by dcow 2y ago
Often when discussing civil liberties, and protections thereof, the argument is "it's a choice you don't have to work for them and they're not the government they're a private entity so they can do whatever they want".
It strikes me how absurd that argument is. It almost deliberately ignores that all citizens are private entities and would do whatever they want were it not for laws restricting the ability of one person to abridge the happiness of another.
So how in the world have we become a society that's okay with TLS inspection "because security and compliance" but not okay with recorded phone calls? It's a crock of crap. Traditionally, the social value of whatever enterprise wants to engage in that type of spying would need to out-weight the fundamental right to privacy of all its employees. And you'd of course need to demonstrate that e.g. TLS inspection is actually required to sustain that immense value.
Laws exist to make unethical creepy things also illegal things. You don't get a pass on being subject to limits on your ability delete the privacy of other citizens just because you're not the government. At least not in my book.
And it's not really how things work. Your employer can't make hiring decisions based on protected classes or political alignment. So why should they be allowed to subject you to undue invasion of privacy? Is Civil Rights Act the only relevant legal framework these days?
- gruez 2y ago>So how in the world have we become a society that's okay with TLS inspection "because security and compliance" but not okay with recorded phone calls? What are you talking about? Call center workers are recorded all the time. People working in finance must conduct work conversations on a monitored medium, lest they get smacked by the SEC. https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/50dc5bd3/unmonitored-business-communications-in-financial-services https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication... If you don't want the company to monitor your instagram browsing, do it from your phone, not your work machine.
- consteval 2y agoWiretapping is largely illegal except for some specific clauses for specific types of work. But generally, your employer is not allowed to arbitrarily record your phone calls.
- dcow 2y agoI well understand the security apologist’s approach to corporate device management and network security etc. I lead citing your response as being something I don’t understand at a social-political level. From where does a company derive its power and authority to TLS inspect aka spy on its employees when it is by and large illegal to wiretap employees outside of specific allowed circumstances? Why is this legal and why do we broadly accept it? Checkout https://honest.security/ https://honest.security/
- gruez 2y ago>I lead citing your response as being something I don’t understand at a social-political level. From where does a company derive its power and authority to TLS inspect aka spy on its employees when it is by and large illegal to wiretap employees outside of specific allowed circumstances? Why is this legal and why do we broadly accept it? They're both legal with proper notices. It's illegal to wiretap phones, but if you slap a "this conversation is being recorded for quality control purposes" it's suddenly legal. The same exists for TLS inspection. It requires the company's root certificate to be installed, which typically is only done on corporate machines. Such machines usually have a login banner along the lines of "this machine is for work purposes only and all usage is monitored".