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> Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt once said, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." It was a preposterous statement assuming that the only value of privacy is to protect one's self when they do something morally, ethically or legally wrong. It was remarkably incorrect and offensive and everyone (rightly) lambasted him for it.

Your statement is eerily similar. I'm not commenting on what Google has done here. But to say that they wouldn't care about being video taped if they were not doing something illegal does not make complete sense.

I agree that people ought to be entitled to keep secrets. But Google is not a person, it is a publicly traded corporation which wields economic power on the same scale as state governments. I don't argue that they aren't entitled to secrets, but if they are, it is for different reasons and the comparison of those rights is misleading.

Entitled or not, it's clear that organizations have many reasons to want to keep secrets.

I would agree. I do think that corporations should not be treated in precisely the same way that individual persons are treated. Corporations have (arguably) far too much power as is.

But I think that the level of privacy that allows one to request to not be videotaped against their will extends to corporations in some circumstances. Unless there is something truly fishy happening here, and there is not much evidence that there is, I believe that Google is within their liberties to be upset over this.

On the contrary, since Schmidt was actually running Google when this incident happened, it would seem to be perfectly applicable. <sarcasm> Or are you saying that Schmidt only meant it for others and not for Google itself? </sarcasm>

I believe Schmidt's statement was about activities online.

I believe his statement also applied to things like your friends uploading embarrassing pictures of you and things like that, which is essentially paralleled here.

I'm sorry, but this 'they wouldn't care' garbage is so obviously wrong that my 'someone is wrong on the internet' reflex has kicked in.

You have never done anything that is legal, ethical, moral, and fine, but you still don't want the whole world to see it? You've never seen a tv report or a youtube clip where somebody took something perfectly fine and tried to make it sinister to get more views? You'd be ok if I decided to truman show your life? And, thinking you'd be ok, you're then willing to inflict that same decision upon others, who might feel very differently about attention than you do?

Star Wars Kid didn't want the world to see him goofing off. I don't want you to have videotape of me bumming around the house on the weekend. An employer would probably prefer that their public image be a planned and staged PR event rather than footage of the christmas party winding down. There's nothing illegal going on, there is nothing sinister about these desires, we just don't want you presenting us to the world in this manner. Why should we?

I worked for a large, international financial data company that was busted for something very similar. In essence they had a large amount of contract employees on premises (hired through a temp agency) that had worked for them for years, at desks amongst the regular employees, with the same email addresses as the regular employees, etc. They were indistinguishable from regular employees except they did not get pensions, paid leave, or any of the other perks of regular employees.

When a few were made redundant due to cutbacks, they promptly lawyered up and were able to settle for a year's worth of compensation, which is what they would have received as regular employees.

In short, if you're a contractor but have a desk in the office and an email address with the company in some cases you are more or less an 'employee', and this has been backed up by courts in the US from time to time.

http://employeeissues.com/ic_vs_employee.htm

Your dad's "winning" of the case was a mixed blessing. It did not result in temporary workers becoming real employees with full benefits. Instead, it removed a number of benefits from temporary employees of large corporations all over the country. It also removed the contractor's ability to work for longer than a year at a time without a break.

For example, Intel does not allow temps to use the gym because their legal department worries that might make the division between employee and contractor less solid.

The ruling has created a group of roaming workers who will often work a lesser job for 90 days until they can go back to their big company temp job.

A number of contractors would consider themselves better off if your dad hadn't sued Microsoft. Corporations don't need to do anything illegal for this to be the case.

That churn is a huge PITA and disrupts implementation projects something fierce. The ruling also disrupts team cohesion at some places. I am convinced some of the outsourcing that has gone on is directly tied to this ruling.

why not hire the people that are expected to be doing work for your company for years to come? why they need to be "long-term temps"?

It doesn't make sense. It feels like this is a poor excuse for hiring cheaper labor and get away with hiring as few perm employees as possible.

First, I wasn't "cheaper" labor. The fundamental difference is that the people who build new stuff often are too expensive for maintenance duty. So, a company might have a group of projects that need to be done. Some take multiple years. This ruling really shifted the strategy to an outsource solution instead of a contractor / employee solution.

That ruling kinda screwed up a couple of consulting gigs for me. A couple of companies wouldn't keep people over 12 - 24 months and projects rarely got totally done by then. So they switch to outsourcing (no problem with the lawyers) and the independent contractor (who was making good coin) is pushed out of the picture. The reason was always "The Microsoft Ruling".

> Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped.

That is, quite simply, not true. Companies have all manner of secrets that are important for their business. There's nothing intrinsically nefarious about trade secrets, and those sometimes extend even into soft things like processes and organization. There's nothing illegal about Google's search code, but they sure as hell wouldn't want someone taping that and publishing it.

>> Let's face it, if they were doing something legal they wouldn't care if they were getting videotaped.

>That is, quite simply, not true. Companies have all manner of secrets that are important for their business.

While I agree with you on the "privacy is only for those who have something to hide fallacy", in this case he was filming in the parking lot. If Google had their trade secrets in view from the parking lot, they cease to be trade secrets.

I'm guessing there's a difference (legally) between benefits like health insurance and a retirement account versus luxuries like disneyland trips, massage chairs, gourmet food, etc.