<story><title>Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks, even emotions</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/14/is-your-boss-secretly-or-not-so-secretly-watching-you</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Rotdhizon</author><text>A majority of stuff mentioned in this article has to be outright illegal, if not borderline illegal when talking about privacy concerns. To get past it, they had to have put massive inclusions in their employee contracts and had employees sign off their entire existence to the company. It should also be noted that these happenings seem to all take place at sleazy, physical labor intensive companies. This isn&amp;#x27;t happening in any respectable sector I&amp;#x27;d hope. I think the worst part is, is that these ideas are being created more and more by higher ups in companies and government who see no moral wrong in their plans. It doesn&amp;#x27;t affect them personally, but if it can be used in any way to further control a peon employee, then it&amp;#x27;s good for productivity. Even though it seems a bit like the article tries to defend this practice, there will never be a day on society where this is considered alright.&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day though, this is happening mostly to disposable workers who no on cares about. If one person complains about company overreach, well they can be replaced within 5 minutes. This is more something that lower income, down and out employees will have to worry about. This absolutely would not be tolerated to catch on to any respected industries&amp;#x2F;sectors. That&amp;#x27;s to not say physical labor workers aren&amp;#x27;t important, without them society would fall apart. It&amp;#x27;s that no one in authority typically cares about that type of worker and those employees concerns fall on deaf ears.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Silhouette</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t happening in any respectable sector I&amp;#x27;d hope.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;When a bigger company bought the smaller software company where I worked, almost the first thing they tried to do was change all the contracts to include things like universal IP claims and getting more visibility and control over things people were doing away from the office.&lt;p&gt;This culture was becoming pervasive even a few years ago, and the arrogance and contempt exhibited by the senior executive who came to tell us about it was almost unbelievable. It felt like he watched Darth Vader&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;I am altering the deal. Pray I don&amp;#x27;t alter it any further&amp;quot; scene and thought it was an instruction manual.&lt;p&gt;The only meaningful difference seems to be that since it was a software business, a significant proportion of the developers essentially telling them to shove their deal or we&amp;#x27;d walk was powerful enough to put a stop to it. Obviously people working in unskilled jobs where staff are fungible aren&amp;#x27;t so lucky. We&amp;#x27;re supposed to have employment laws to protect people in vulnerable positions like that from exploitation, but welcome to 2018 I guess.</text></comment>
<story><title>Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks, even emotions</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/14/is-your-boss-secretly-or-not-so-secretly-watching-you</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Rotdhizon</author><text>A majority of stuff mentioned in this article has to be outright illegal, if not borderline illegal when talking about privacy concerns. To get past it, they had to have put massive inclusions in their employee contracts and had employees sign off their entire existence to the company. It should also be noted that these happenings seem to all take place at sleazy, physical labor intensive companies. This isn&amp;#x27;t happening in any respectable sector I&amp;#x27;d hope. I think the worst part is, is that these ideas are being created more and more by higher ups in companies and government who see no moral wrong in their plans. It doesn&amp;#x27;t affect them personally, but if it can be used in any way to further control a peon employee, then it&amp;#x27;s good for productivity. Even though it seems a bit like the article tries to defend this practice, there will never be a day on society where this is considered alright.&lt;p&gt;At the end of the day though, this is happening mostly to disposable workers who no on cares about. If one person complains about company overreach, well they can be replaced within 5 minutes. This is more something that lower income, down and out employees will have to worry about. This absolutely would not be tolerated to catch on to any respected industries&amp;#x2F;sectors. That&amp;#x27;s to not say physical labor workers aren&amp;#x27;t important, without them society would fall apart. It&amp;#x27;s that no one in authority typically cares about that type of worker and those employees concerns fall on deaf ears.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mc32</author><text>You would think so but companies like google do this for facilities management to divine usage patterns and whether to devote more or fewer resources to something.  To know if more efficiencies might be derived.  But yes it’s pernicious.</text></comment>