Comment by scarejunba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scarejunba | Hacker News Reader

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Irrespective of Google's statement, it appears that the people they were following felt unsafe. There's a little bit of "why didn't you tell me" to this. If someone were cataloging my every movement because I left my phone broadcasting to a bunch of Bluetooth beacons then sure it's my fault for doing that but if you're my coworker surely you'd tell me! If you instead were all like "Yup, it's bad practice to be doing that so of course I could tell where you were at all times. All I did was set up the beacons, man. You broadcast to them." I'd think they were pretty fucking weird. I'd seriously think they're a kook of some sort.

Likewise, if you saw me put "Get kidney transplant" on my calendar and decided to subscribe to my calendar, then that's pretty fucking weird. I wouldn't buy "that's bad practice so I was allowed to stalk you". I'd be like "this dude is a fucking weirdo, can I go work elsewhere?".

My calendar at every place I've worked has been public with private events for sensitive stuff but any time I put some private stuff public I'd expect someone to ask me if I meant to do that if they noticed.

If you can get someone to agree on the record that they felt unsafe, you then have cover to take almost any action on behalf of their safety.

I do appreciate that some people felt unsafe, but I wonder how exactly the messaging was made. Nobody ever came to me and asked how I felt about my work calendar being shared. You can't even get that information from Google.

So this information on sharing was provided to particular people, and they were asked, "do you feel scared?". Presentation is everything, and if presented in terms of how their personal information was included, it can feel different compared to when shown in neutral terms. In addition, if these people were told that the four employees were dangerous or a threat, this will also colour their viewpoints.

Bluetooth and kidney transplant arguments are about two hypothetical stories, and pointing out that if these had happened, it would be weird (well, yes it would, but that's not this story, they are very different).

Why in the first place someone was screencapping someone's calendar? Were they trying to organize some impromptu meeting with a hihger-up? Who was scared exactly? How did this came to light?

I mean if the recently fired folks tried to pressure some other group, that's bad, and it seems it has nothing to do with unionizing. But if they were trying to catch some elusive exec to have a statement from, that could be different.

But there are no specifics anywhere, just "Google bad, union good" or "stalkers bad"

Agreed that there's not enough context to say why screencapping happened, what happened to said screencaps, and how all of this turned into scared employees.

I currently perceive Google's note as if it were a press release; treat with appropriate scepticism. We'll have to see if more information comes to light.

Many would argue that the team the person looked up was making other employees feel unsafe by installing a mandatory policy enforcement chrome plugin for the entire company. So looking at their calendars and seeing what their meetings are about could just be seen as making sure the team isn't doing something nefarious. But of course the people who spies on behalf of management gets special privileges so nobody gets to even look up public information about them, then they evidently get fired.

Example of employees feeling targeted:

https://time.com/5709653/google-employee-spy-tool/

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