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Comment by ravitation | Hacker News Reader

> socio-political paradigm

Sigh.

And workplaces are socio-political contexts... I didn't find it very difficult to get past his hyperbole, and I frankly find it hard to believe that you did. It isn't hard to argue that monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights - regardless of the fact that you arbitrarily draw the line at "recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street."

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> And workplaces are socio-political contexts

They're not governments, they're companies.

> monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights

It isn't, unless your definition of "personal rights" includes "things I personally want which are neither codified in, nor protected by, laws."

In what way are companies not trivially compared to states (governments) in this context (surveillance)? You're being intellectually disingenuous.

I mean, you completely (amusingly) misquoted that sentence. I said "it isn't hard to argue that [...]". I did not make an absolute statement that it is (a violation)... Come on now.

> You're being intellectually disingenuous.

Okay...let me see if I understand you correctly. You're defending the other commenter's description of corporate logs as totalitarian surveillance, but you're saying that I'm being intellectually disingenuous because I'm pointing out that companies are not governments?

No, I'm calling you intellectually disingenuous for reading a comment about internal corporate surveillance, and choosing to pontificate on word choice when the meaning is trivial to understand. Blatantly misquoting me also doesn't help.

>They're not governments, they're companies.

You're right, it's important to note they are more powerful and exercise more control over the lives of their employees than many governments, though employees often have the same opportunity to leave their company as they do their government (none).

>It isn't, unless your definition of "personal rights" includes "things I personally want which are neither codified in, nor protected by, laws."

Yes that's literally exactly what personal rights always means. Legal rights are legal rights, personal rights are a conception of what the person who uses the term wants or believes rights to be.

> You're right, it's important to note they are more powerful and exercise more control over the lives of their employees than many governments, though employees often have the same opportunity to leave their company as they do their government (none).

Especially when they're also dependent on their corporation for healthcare and retirement...

This is exactly my point, it's effortless to compare corporations to government, especially in this context. For the other comment to base his argument around the word "totalitarian" seems nothing if not disingenuous, given that the meaning behind the word is clear.

> imply privacy

Workplace provided communication mechanisms do not in any way imply privacy. Best practices are that staff sign an acknowledgement of such, so that there is no such confusion.

So, if an acknowledgement is needed... It's needed because there might be an implication of privacy, right?

Generally speaking it’s easy to argue that employees have no expectation of privacy on the work network for the following reasons:

1. Regulation in most countries requires it to be this way, we’ll most countries any of us is likely to work in. Which is to say: The Law Hath Spoken, which is to say: The People Hath Decided.

2. The employer should have spelled this out to you at time of hire, and had you sign a document to verify you understand.

The problem here isn’t that the direct messages take place in the workplace, it’s that they take place on infrastructure owned by the workplace.

I didn't actually argue that there was an expectation...

I only said that the comment I replied to relied on a purely arbitrary definition for what an invasion of personal privacy was... He argued that because "your company is not recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street" it wasn't unreasonable (or totalitarian), because the company was "protecting itself and other employees from potentially problematic abuse scenarios." Even though it's amusingly easy to imagine that a totalitarian regime would make the same argument for its own surveillance practices....

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