
The Rise of Workplace Surveillance - jansho
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/06/workplace-surveillance-big-brother-technology
======
degurechaff
I remember this post
[https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/2jtd2f/worked_on_a_c...](https://www.reddit.com/r/excel/comments/2jtd2f/worked_on_a_completely_locked_down_machine_time/).

This is what happens you try to calculate productivity with how much salary
you get.

The poster make video player in excel to padding his clock time because he
already finished his work in 1 hours and need 3 hours to appear busy.

------
pjc50
Parodied very effectively in _Snow Crash_ (1992), where one of the characters
has to spend exactly the right amount of time reading a document. Too much
would be deemed slacking; too little would be inattentiveness.

------
chewbacha
This makes work a panopticon prison.

> The concept of the design is to allow all (pan-) inmates of an institution
> to be observed (-opticon) by a single watchman without the inmates being
> able to tell whether or not they are being watched.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)

~~~
MisterTea
This is is automated, real time, omnipresent surveillance of everyone.

It's worse than a panopticon as in a panopticon prison you have one person
surveilling 1000 for example but only able to watch one at a time. The idea is
the prisoners never know who is being watched so in theory they all behave
thinking they are all being watched. But math kinda destroys that theory as
they each have at least a 1000:1 chance of being watched so the odds are in
the prisoner's favor.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's a good point but even a total surveillance system has limits of
actionability. Any given response system or mechanism is going to have limits
of attention _that it can apply to actual and justifiably observed behaviour_.
That is, _if the goal_ is to identify, and reduce, negative behaviours, then
whatever it is that your policing mechanism is can only act on some _n_ cases
in any given period of time.

The problem is that reducing negative behaviours in a just fashion is _not_
the only, or even the most likely, possible dynamic for such a system. In a
tyrannical regime (political, social, economic: this is _not_ strictly related
to politics), there's a great deal of power and control to be had _by acting
arbitrarily, without predictability, and without recourse, at any given time.

Take the example given in _Paths of Glory _, a 1957 film telling the story of
the (arbitrary) execution of three French soldiers who had refused to
undertake suicidal attacks in the trench warfare of World War I. The process
draws on the ancient tradition of_ decimation _, which is the arbitrary
killing of one in ten_ of ones own troops* in order to instill on the
remainder the consequences of failure to follow command.

The real risk of global surveillance is that it provides _either_ the
justification for, _or the plausibility of justification for_ , arbitrary
prosecution of any given individual at any given time.

That's an absolutely despotic state.

------
albertgoeswoof
Is this article a joke?

"Last year an employee at an IT services company sent a private chat message
to a friend at work worried that he had just shared his sexual identity with
his manager in a meeting and fearing he’d face career reprisal. Wiretap
detected the employee’s concern and alerted a senior company exec who was then
able to intervene, talk to the manager and defuse the situation."

What. the. fuck.

thanks "senior exec" for reading my messages, stepping in and "defusing the
situation" whatever that means.

it gets worse:

"Or if you usually touch 10 documents a day and print two and suddenly you are
touching 500 and printing 200 that may mean you’re stealing documents in
preparation of leaving the company."

of course, that's the only possible logical conclusion.

What a waste of time, if I ever saw this in place as an employee or manager I
would immediately leave and possibly sue.

~~~
w458cmau
I lost it at "[...] when an All State Insurance franchise did a live
demonstration of Interguard’s software to other dealers. The technology
started scanning the network and almost immediately found an email with the
words “client list” and “résumé”. The demonstrator opened the email in front
of a room full of peers to discover his best employee was plotting to move to
another company."

What is wrong with people?

~~~
falcolas
When you optimize for profit at any cost as a company, that kind of mindset
carries over into you employee/leadership culture.

------
ducttape12
If an employer feels the need to do this, it's a major red flag that there are
serious issues in their culture and management. Monitoring your employees will
just make things worse.

~~~
Pigo
My last company started having design sessions to build a system that would
monitor how much employees were actively engaged at their desk. I tried to
steer them to "rewarding employees who were working hard" goal, but they were
only interested in punishing people. It was a real eye opener into the culture
that was forming.

~~~
tomjen3
The sad thing is that at that point they probably did need those systems, as I
imagine all the good workers would leave.

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gadders
A bank I worked for last year rolled out monitoring software to all their IT
staff. It recorded the window title of the application with focus on a regular
schedule and kept this in a log somewhere. They said the results would only be
used in aggregate, but that was treated with skepticism.

Also, the app does pop up with alerts every so often suggesting you take a
yoga break so it is adding a lot of value. /Sarcasm

~~~
PeachPlum
The solution is to provide terminals with only access to work tools.

No-one plays Solitaire on a supermarket checkout till

(cue someone finding a photo of someone playing Solitaire on a supermarket
checkout till)

~~~
albertgoeswoof
The solution is to hire people that care about their job, or at least people
who are accountable for their output.

Difficult in a supermarket checkout scenario though.

~~~
PeachPlum
Hiring people who care and keeping them in that mindset is hard, especially at
scale.

32.9% of U.S. employees "engaged" in workplace in February (2015)

[http://news.gallup.com/poll/181895/employee-engagement-
reach...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/181895/employee-engagement-reaches-
three-year-high.aspx)

and from a 2014 report

[http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital-
consulting/2014...](http://www.aon.com/attachments/human-capital-
consulting/2014-trends-in-global-employee-engagement-report.pdf)

There are signs that the employee value proposition is breaking down.
Perceptions of internal brand alignment have decreased 4 percentage points in
the last two years. More employees are saying positive things about their
organization and striving to go above and beyond. Engagement overall has
increased, but the global element signifying intent to “Stay” with their
companies has shown no change. Employees are engaging more, but only a little
over half see a long-term path with their current company and fewer see a
compelling value proposition to keep their talents with the current company.

------
dredmorbius
I'm coming to the conclusion that, _at a society scale_ , there's a
fundamental conflict such that _advances in communications technologies
undermine trust_.

This is a case of paradox of composition -- whilst _at a personal scale_
improved communications can increase trust, at a _mass_ scale, the tendency
seems to be to undermine it. This increasingly strikes me as a problem.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/)

In a world without high-speed, high-bandwidth, rapid, and reliable
communications, you have to extend, and rely on, trust between individuals.
Cultures evolve systems (usually religious) to create and foster a
sufficiently-reliable trust network.

As communications improve, reliance on that trust diminishes. You no longer
need to be able to rely on a person working in your interest for days, or
weeks, or months, or years. You can check on them at a moment's notice. You
can monitor them continuously, across a wide range of metrics, without their
conscious awareness.

A domain built on Trust becomes instead Panopticon.

(Further discussions of trust:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=trust&restrict...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=trust&restrict_sr=on))

~~~
Bartweiss
This ties interestingly to the news about Bitcoin power usage from last week:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-
mi...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mining-
electricity-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change)

The beauty of Bitcoin is an inherently-trustworthy transaction structure
without the need for a central authority or trust between parties. The cost is
exactly what you describe - trust is replaced by a massive expenditure of work
to independently verify everything. It's an interesting microcosm of what's
happening throughout society in general.

~~~
dredmorbius
David Gerard, author of _Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain_ , has made just
that point. I can't quote it enough (three times so far at my Reddit blog):

 _Decentralisation is the paramount feature in bitcoin, but it turns out that
that 's a bad idea that's really, really expensive, because it turns out that
a tiny bit of trust saves you a fortune._

 _" Decentralised" isn't a useful buzzword in a lot of ways, because it turns
out that you want to be a part of society._

From his interview with the _Financial Times_ :

[https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod](https://soundcloud.com/user-544122300/gerardpod)

------
nopacience
Companys have no need to get into employee home. And employees should not give
access to a camera inside their home. Its impossible to know who has access to
that camera. The companies can set up an remote environment(remote pc) that
employee must connect to in order to work. And that PC the company can connect
to and monitor whats being worked on.

If the company can connect to the user computer and install software there,
that means the user just opened up his computer to the company. And, if the
company software happens to be "buggy" (to say the least) it could mean that
company has teorically hacked the employee computer and now has access to
every single file on that machine and if it wants it can try to connect to
other machines on the same network. If the company software malfunctions, it
could delete all the user files or share with others in the internet.

Having said that, its probably important to separate. As a last resource if
the company really want to monitor the employee, use 1 internet for company
(with 1 computer only for work related) and 1 internet for home usage (and
home computers).

------
tsujamin
It's only creepy when your employer does it, not when your social media
platform does ;)

~~~
jansho
No what’s creepy is that we’ve got enough surveillance from social media and
CCTV, now it’s in our workplace too. That’s _most_ of our day. Sheesh, these
people need to get a life

Edit: typo

------
mooreds
Huh. I wonder if all of the folks building and selling these systems have it
pointed at themselves (the email monitoring, the webcams)? Or is it just for
the common workers?

Just because someone is paying you doesn't give them carte blanche to examine
every minute of your time working. That was never explicit before because it
was never possible before, but i guess we need to make it explicit now.

~~~
colejohnson66
It’s almost certainly _not_ being used by the creators. It’s the same thing as
politicians; It doesn’t affect me, and it sounds like a good idea on paper, so
go for it.

------
badrabbit
This. I live this everyday and they talk about it in terms of "insider threat"
and "user behavior analytics". Yes , every last thing you do at work is being
monitored and analyzed.

You see,I am at a point where I wish it stopped at work. $work these days
spies on your off work activities as well. Essentially making you their slave.

If you don't experience this,then maybe your company isn't big enough to
afford it(or if it is,please tell me more about this wonderful company that
let's you do your job without 24/7 surveillance)

EDIT:Just search for " user behavior analytics".Orwell would be impressed

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throw2016
These kind of tech has always been marketed to enterprises under various
ruses. It's persistent. If the company happens to have immature control freaks
in decision maker roles then they manage to sell.

Ultimately its culture and the decision makers get to decide. Monitoring is of
course downwards and those making the decision do not get to be monitored in
this intrusive fashion.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Except we’re getting better at quantifying, and the better we are at it, the
more we can optimize. Factory workers didn’t use to be measured, but then they
were. And now they’re automated. Many aspects of white collar jobs are not
impervious to this either. As we move up the chain, we’ll see that even more
can be measured and optimized, even for the decision makers. Just make sure
you keep climbing!

Edit: it also helps when firing people, as you can make a list of metrics and
then make goals that are just out of reach for bottom 50% of performers. Then
when you need to fire people and deny unemployment, you point to the metrics
they were failing and you have a valid cause to terminate for lack of
performance, thus saving you money on unemployment insurance premiums.

~~~
throw2016
This is a bit of a straw man. You don't need surveillance technology for this.

If a worker is expected to make 10 pieces of an item per hour its easy for
managers to verify this. For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly
easy to verify expected performance.

This is not new, workers have been measured for performance everywhere since
manufacturing and corporate jobs began.

If we ignore that for a moment, the point you are making applies to management
too, yet this tech is guaranteed to not be used for management where things
and outcomes are left 'more fuzzy'. Why?

How about we apply it to governance with complete transparency to the
electorate. Nope, not going to happen. Because its exploitative and intrusive
and will only be applied to the powerless lowest who have no choice.

~~~
pjc50
> For a knowledge or creative worker it's similarly easy to verify expected
> performance.

No it really isn't! Coding performance metrics are a wasteland of failed
techniques.

~~~
Bartweiss
Hence, I think, the rise of judging programmers on business outcomes. Revenue
increases aren't a great metric for programmers (no one has a damn clue how to
quantify tech debt and futureproofing), but at least they aren't actively
destructive. Similarly, "story point velocity" and the like aren't tied to
anything intrinsic, but at least they can sometimes be used as a predictor of
quality.

Meanwhile the history of the field is one of judging programmers on bugs
fixed, lines written, commit frequency, or a hundred other standards that are
_only_ perverse incentives. Most aren't even Goodhart's law issues, because
they weren't predictive _before_ they became targets!

------
lambersley
I would quit, without second thought. I have always been of the opinion that
you need to hire the right people and fire and bad ones. Workplace
surveillance is a trying to fill a gap for BAD managers/mgmt. This crosses so
many lines.

------
retrac98
I'd refuse to work anywhere that did this. It puts people on a treadmill they
can't get off of.

~~~
falcolas
I think it's safe to assume that every employer does this, to some extent.
Sure, some may simply be doing automated scanning of your emails and document
access to ensure you're not leaking secrets, but it's a slippery slope that
only takes one leader to go to hell.

------
xwat
Relevant:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11305701)

------
jansho
Now that surveillance is getting cleverer, the question is, how do we know if
we’re being monitored? How can we tell which companies practice surveillance?

~~~
nathanaldensr
It's a chilling effect. Because you probably can't detect who's monitoring
you, you must assume _all companies_ do--potentially even the ones that say
they don't.

~~~
jansho
Must the 21st century be characterised by paranoia/vigilance? :(

~~~
falcolas
No, it doesn't have to be that way. But when both corporate government leaders
want, and are getting, unparalleled visibility into what we do and what we
think; the only practical counter to that is paranoia and vigilance.

There is another alternative - acceptance - something which is much easier on
your mind. Acceptance isn't an option for everyone, however.

------
Fnoord
I suppose this entire article is about the USA given the first paragraph plus
this being part of The Guardian's World section (ie. not local UK).

On which jurisdiction(s) does this apply? Readers (pref lawyers) should check
if this is legal in their jurisdiction(s).

For people from NL I can recommend Arnoud Engelfriet's blog (a Dutch lawyer
specialised in IT law) [1] and its search feature.

An ontopic example discussing whether an employer is allowed to see private
files in a business OneDrive account is discussed [2]. There are many more
examples, but the blog is in Dutch and generally applies to Dutch law, so
YMMV. I'm curious if similar websites or platforms exist for other
jurisdictions.

[1] [https://blog.iusmentis.com](https://blog.iusmentis.com)

[2] [https://blog.iusmentis.com/2016/10/17/mag-werkgever-
privebes...](https://blog.iusmentis.com/2016/10/17/mag-werkgever-
privebestanden-zakelijke-onedrive-bekijken/)

~~~
Create
CERN certainly does this for at least a decade, although it has its own
"jurisdiction". Management likes it a lot, because it is so easy to abuse.

------
AndrewKemendo
Obligatory link to Manna:

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
tribune
At a company with a healthy culture, managers should be hiring people who they
trust to get their jobs done. If you feel the need to watch your employee's
every move, why would you hire them in the first place? Treating employees
like delinquent children instead of mature teammates indicates a very sick
company culture that I would avoid at all costs.

------
SkyPuncher
Hmm, I don't know that "rise" is a good description. This is just a reminder
that if you are using employer owned resources, you should not have an
expectation of privacy. It has been this way for decades and is no different
now. Perhaps, the only difference is the ability for a system to detect
anomalies without human intervention.

------
defo_nonconvex
"If a paralegal is writing a document and every few seconds is switching to
Hipchat, Outlook and Word then there’s an issue that can be resolved by
addressing it with the employee"

Wait, what? Are they trying to do ADHD diagnosis from window activity?

~~~
fapjacks
And stupider, "can be resolved by addressing it with the employee"... You just
_know_ this company is going to put that employee through a couple hours of
some awful corporate video training about motivation.

------
mmagin
“If you are a parent and you have a teenage son or daughter coming home late
and not doing their homework you might wonder what they are doing. It’s the
same as employees.”

Uhh, no. Employees are adults.

------
the_wheel
How would you know you’re being monitored?

------
cooervo
If a workplace implemented this, this would create anxiety in their workers
causing them to leave.

