Walmart patents surveillance tool that can eavesdrop on workers

+1. I spent my youth starting at 15 reading sci-fi books from the 50s onward, and the number of dystopian futures depicted as pure fantasy then but not that far from becoming reality now is disturbing. I'd dare to say that reading that genre is likely the best possible way to educate kids minds to see current events coming years before they actually do.

It's about going too far, and yes--there is a line.

I don't find it "interesting" in the slightest.

People, even at work, should have some privacy rights.

I don't think a Worker's Privacy Bill will get passed in the near future. The corporations have won for now. It's too bad.

We are so conditioned to being abused by corporations they have us arguing over where the line is.

These corporations know hiring will never be a problem for most positions, so why not get cute?

In any organization, when you don't have any team spirit; your employees/widgets will find ways to screw you over.

I find Amazon's hand monitor patent appalling.

(I'm dropping you again Amazon--thanks for another reason. I was going to drop them because they changed the way to drop the monthly Prime plan, but this news was the last straw.)

Microphones and cameras don't just pick up "what you want". A key press is more than appropriate to gather the desired "this isn't on sale" metric.

This device is also not intended for that use case. It's meant to generate metrics to "ensure employees are actually greeting." If you are SO FLUSH WITH CASH and in such a dearth of things to do with it that you are quite literally trying to optimize your greeter metrics, there is a bloody problem.

Then there is the case that the very idea borders on abusive micromanagement. The kind that can only be plausibly skated under the radar through copious use of passive voice when describing it.

Life worked JUST FINE not being recorded audio/video or otherwise.

If profit hounding is reaching such high levels, a Wal-Mart greeter can't be trusted to make a decision whether or not a customer is in the mood for a greeting, then it is quite obvious that someone further up the chain has completely lost touch with the idea of "Professional Courtesy".

Never mind that half of this metrics gathering wouldn't be necessary if the company weren't trying to out grow the problem it's trying to solve by hemorrhaging labor in favor of machines.

The modern community is rife with distrust. More and more, people drift farther and farther away from each other. Mental and physical illness become more and more serious problems as humans are increasingly expected to behave as mass-produced cogs, interchangeable, and undeviating in how they carry out their job. The human psyche doesn't cope well with that. Humans are DYNAMIC. They are creative creatures, with difference being built into every decision.

The kind of control that industry keeps pushing for illustrates that leadership has little, or deprioritizes any semblance of human respect and dignity in how they engage with labor in favor of a more attractive bottom line to attract investers.

It isn't innovation. It isn't improvement. It certainly isn't engaging with and being a fundamental positive force within a community.

It's about plopping a pump down into a puddle of untapped value and sucking it dry, to hell with the consequences for society, the community, or those we leave behind to emulate the values we clearly espoused by letting it happen unchallenged.

I don't know about anyone else, but this is disgusting behavior of a sort that deserves more than mild degree of censure.

When you're having a conversation through an industrialized medium, you may or may not like the fact that your conversation is preserved, but it isn't a surprise if it is, because you have the sense of it taking place through just such a medium (even if it's something you've never articulated).

If you're talking to a checker (or anyone) face-to-face, there's an absence of any explicit industrial medium. You're going to have the sense that whatever industrialized processes are in place, the face-to-face conversation is out-of-band. Of course it's going to be a surprise when it's not, short of explicitly notifying people otherwise.

It’s great to have ethics and refuse unethical projects, but reality is that there is a line of people outside of your employer’s door. They just have to find one person willing to set ethics aside.

I remember refusing a stinky project. It was pointless. I didn’t get fired or anything—-manager just assigned it to the guy in the next cubicle over.

There are more recent resources, but see for example from 1993: "The Ethical Engineer: An "Ethics Construction Kit" Places Engineering in a New Light" by Eugene Schlossberger https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17137987-the-ethical-eng... "On occasion, professionals need to use moral reasoning as well as engineering skills to function effectively in their occupation. Eugene Schlossberger has created a practical guide to ethical decision-making for engineers, students, and workers in business and industry. The Ethical Engineer sets out the tools and materials essential to dealing with whistle-blowing, environmental and safety concerns, bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, sales ethics, advertising, employer-employee relations, when to fight a battle, and when to break the rules. The author offers recommendations and techniques as well as rules, principles, and values that can guide the reader. Lively examples, engaging anecdotes, witty comments, and well-reasoned analysis prove his conviction that ""ethics is good business."

Langdon Winner is another person who writes on this topic at a more abstract societal level, like in his "Autonomous technology: technics-out-of-control as a theme in political thought". https://www.langdonwinner.com/

And see also "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt: http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/ "Who are you going to be? That is the question. In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline." The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy. Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

But there are no end of others. But living up to your ideals is often easier said then done in so many areas of life... It helps to have a group of people with common ideals to support each other.

But for example, when I was in CivilEngineering&OR graduate school in Princeton in the late 1980s, I was essentially told by the then director of graduate studies that taking a public policy course from Frank von Hippel ( https://www.princeton.edu/sgs/faculty-staff/frank-von-hippel... ) that included topics like ethics and engineering policy especially about energy policy and weapons proliferation would hurt my career there and was strongly discouraged from taking it. I took it anyway. :-) But that was all no doubt part of why I ended up leaving after a year. The majority of other engineering students even then were from other countries and funded by their governments or companies and had less choice in how compliant they had to be.

That was perhaps a reason Princeton lost a chance at maybe being the first to develop the web (although I made many mistakes myself along the way too): https://pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html "This was my proposal for graduate studies at Princeton University twenty [now thirty] years ago (and in some ways includes a proposal for creating a mini-Google and a mini-World-Wide-Web. :-)."

Great story. It also describes how the powerful keep the benefits of automation to themselves instead of letting everyone's life get better.

The recordings stopped being random a long time ago. I work for a major insurance company and literally every second I am logged in, they record what I say and do. This company has had an issue with fraud being committed by employees so I understand their scrutiny but it still is unnerving to think about.

If they're not actually recording the audio (just a boolean of whether or not the cashier said "did you find everything you needed?"), they might not need anyone's consent.

They don’t need consent. A store is semi-public space. There is no expectation of privacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space

From what I recall, even in two-party states, simply informing the other party is implicit consent, even if they say they do not consent to being recorded. The only way to reject consent is to hang up the phone, ending the conversation.

(one-party state means I know I'm recording the conversation, so it's legal - I'm not obligated to inform the other party).

In stores, you'll often see a sign somewhere near the entrance that says something like "Smile, you're on camera!", along with a CCTV showing the feed - which is enough to implicitly consent recording when on the premises. If you don't consent, you must leave the store.

So, I imagine a simple sign telling customers both audio and video surveillance is being conducted will be sufficient.

The author now sees the premise to his own book as 'flawed': https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarch...

Talk with UFCW about its efforts to organize Walmart. The idea did occur to them some time ago. If it were at all easy, it would be done by now.

Supposedly, Amazon employees watch the cameras in their stores, to know which Prime account to charge for which item. It sounds like a step between self-check and scan-bag-go, with a "mechanical Turk" to bridge the gap - turn Loss Prevention into legitimate checkout and a profit center.

yes, amazonGO. a shop where you enter, systems detect you via your phone or wireless card, you pick up what you want and leave. items show up on your credit card.