Employee refuses to download app that monitors location, says it got her fired | Hacker News Reader

Employee refuses to download app that monitors location, says it got her fired

cbc.ca

143 pointsBlack101128 comments

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26791402

When I started my last job (decently large corp) there was a long onboarding session for mobile device setup. Email, Skype, a dozen other internal apps, 2FA authenticator, SSO, device profiles, remote locking/erase, certificates — the whole deal. There was even some weird internal app store. I asked them where I could get my company phone to set up all this, and they replied no, you just use your personal phone. I have never been more amused/horrified than at that moment.

I eventually escalated a few levels and was able to get them to buy me one, but I was also presumably the first person who asked so strongly.

people seem to be way too accepting of this stuff nowadays. seems to me as soon as BYOD setups got popular, companies immediately used it to push infrastructure cost onto their employees.

This is where Android massively outclasses iOS: it separates all company data in an isolated profile, has a separate location switch for work apps, has a separate notification switch for work apps and doesn't allow access to your private data. You can easily disable the whole setup yourself (and company doesn't control it) which easily makes notifications go away whenever.

Does that work with the ‘remote locking/erase’ requirement OP stated?

yes. E.g. googles remote management stuff can wipe all data associated to the work profile.

Yes, but it purges the work profile and not the personal part.

Assuming your workplace provides support for it. If they don't, you're SOL.

iOS has MDM enrollment per app as well.

Yeah, last time an employer demanded this. I also suggested to buy mr a work phone or to pay their share of the write off of the phone and the phone bill.

After I calculated that would cost them ~£50/month they quickly changed their mind. They even tried to say that I should not write off my phone in one year

Given how cheap phones have got I find it appaling that the default isn't to just provide a work phone to the new employee.

We need to stop building a world without trust. Always checking, ensuring, surveilling (,mining on a blockchain), this is anti-human and will only lead to unhappiness, burnout, depression. It's no way to live unless we want to be like the Borg eventually.

What does blockchain have to do with literally anything pertaining to this article.

I think they're referring to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26802874

The whole crypto space is about replacing trust-based systems with trust-less systems.

Who cares? Completing a trustless transaction is not parallel to someone tracking your physical location.

Look past the surface of Bitcoin payments, and at the greater space of technologies around blockchains and cryptocurrencies.

The core idea they are all based on is that you can provide mathematically provable distributed consensus if you're willing to jump through enough hoops. That you can build systems that can achieve and enforce agreements without any need to trust the participants. All you need is to trade enough electricity for it. And so the whole crypto space is currently trying to refactor every single aspect of our society to eliminate the need for trusting other people.

The problem is, they're looking at it from the wrong end. The right way of looking at it is, interpersonal trust is a huge performance optimization. It's what allows societies to exist and cooperate without jumping through hoops or burning more electricity than a developed country just to send small amounts of money around.

What the crypto space is explicitly trying to do is to eliminate the most important feature of our civilization.

You're right but ironically the very same people that are now complaining about these measures were the same that enabled it in the first place. All for the sake of convenience. Pandora's jar was opened and there's really no way in sight to put its filth back and close it for good. And one of the worst parts is when this information can be used by people (nations, criminals, etc) for any reason.

>”the very same people that are now complaining about these measures were the same that enabled it in the first place”

Wage workers? No. That’s just false. I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to say but it’s wrong. This is just another appearance of the same class warfare that drives slavery. Working people didn’t ask for this any more than slaves asked for slavery.

I remember, because it was only a few years ago, companies would allocate anyone who needed one a BlackBerry. Any work calls would come to that device, you would use it for emails on the go etc, it was managed by the corporate IT department and when you weren't on call you could leave it in a drawer. It was very clearly "theirs" and could be treated as such.

It actually was ordinary workers who said, hey, I would much prefer to have the company take over my own personal device for this, which I have paid for and pay all the bills for too, it would be soooo convenient not to carry two phones, and of course companies gleefully said yes.

And nowadays if you want a "burner phone" for use at work, you pay for that yourself too! Congratulations everyone, we played ourselves. Well not me, I miss the BlackBerry days, and I said all this when BYOD was becoming fashionable too. But they still took my BlackBerry away and made it all but impossible to stay employed and not install their MDM crap on my own phone.

>It actually was ordinary workers who said, hey, I would much prefer to have the company take over my own personal device for this

Don't remember this. I remember the opposite.

You're not seeing the full picture. People chose to use products and/or services which collect behavioural information for advertising purposes (or put it simply $ for data). This wanting to install tracking software on a personal device is a side-effect of this data collection mentality.

Maybe it'll come crashing down - this whole concept of $ for data - some day, but until then you'll see all of these abuses. And again it's sad how conspiracy theorists were mocked at for this exact hellish scenario. Either people start demanding for something different or the abuse will not stop.

Unfortunately, we've reached a no return point. The next natural stage will be the raise of fascist states. With mass surveillance, AI, and nuclear weapons it will be almost impossible to overthrow them.

You have overestimate that there is no overthrow of these. Geurilla war in Vietnam, Midle East, other have been fight best militarys with succeeding. But here we also have reason why we are needing for to keep gun rights, and for to end existing infringment (e.g. no restricting on automatics).

Its a reason you need to keep the people in your military against the totalitarianists.

US police officers kill about 1000 people a year, guns don't seem to protect them.

Yes you are right on this. Policeman killing is random in most case, so not surprpse here. Also one may not be using gun against police; I am presuming that in rebelion one may, state monopoley on force is going out the window.

The state has no monopoly on force. The US armed forces are made up of US citizens. They are sworn to defend the constitution against all threats, foreign and domestic. That could include a president and congress, it could include corporations, it could include Canada.

The narrative of armed citizens operating in a structure to defend citizens and the constitution works fine if you don't have armed citizens operating in a structure to defend citizens and the constitution.

If you lose hearts and minds of one group armed US citizens (the military), why is your group of armed citizens any more justified?

If you don't lose it, why do you need the armaments?

Overthrowing the government is not the same as defending against invasion.

When you invade somebody and lose - you return to status quo (with some bad diplomatic consequences but still). There's a point past which it doesn't make sense to escalate.

When your citizens try to overthrow you and you lose - you and your family are dead soon. There's no thing that autocratic government won't do to avoid being overthrown.

As for fantasies of gun rights preventing fascism - it didn't historically (see Italy where before Mussolini the gun laws were very loose). Nor did fascism necessarily resulted in stricter gun control (in Germany Hitler actually loosened the gun laws after he took control). It frankly doesn't matter.

The simple fact is - in a developed country uprisings have 0 chance of winning against a professional army. Hand guns change nothing. The only way to win is to persuade the army to take your side. Which usually happens when the country doesn't have enough money to buy their loyalty.

Not sure why people downvote you. This stage is clearly happening. People go to prison for just retweets or a comment in social networks. And how many high rank officials are actually compromised? It's clear and every day it's worse.

Indeed, we are there already. You can lose your job/wellbeing/life for wrongthink, the power unbalance between the haves and have nots gets worse by the day.

I had a team of 10, two of them are remote, we recruted a third person, we work 40 hours a week, usually more or less flexible. We have recruted another person, after 6 month of work with him i have noticed some strange delays, like take too much time to respond etc, we work in pretty much relaxed environement so it was not visible very much. After a quick search i have found his freelance account and proposed him to do some job, he agreed and did so during his active working hours, double pay, how do i suppose counter that ?

Exactly how you already did that. IANAL (although I studied law), but my take is you have proof for a case here.

Fire him? :P

I see it as a fail at both sides, i mean we could find a solution before that last measure

He’s not performing well at work and you found out without any extra surveillance. I mean you didn’t even need to find his freelance gig, it seems irrelevant to what you should do.

Does he get his work done? Is he providing value? If yes, don’t worry about it.

Or the employee does this work in its own time. Assuming he is employed full time.

Does he still get his work done? Not far behind others?

Maybe you pay him too little.

Maybe you should offer him additional contract pay. More he does, more he gets paid.

We do not underpay anyone and have really transparent salary policy, at the end i talked to him and he just wanted to have double pay, but not able to fit two job into the schedule. I can find a solution which satisfy everyone in most cases, but i need to know in advance all the information, i have discovered in the worst possible way here.

Fire him, obviously.

But that's an interesting example. The guy is doing a poor job, so if you want to be impartial, you should fire him for not meeting your expectations.

But it is natural to understand why he is doing a poor job. I mean, maybe it is just a temporary personal issue (ex: sick kids), or maybe just not his fault (ex: task more complex than expected, broken IT, etc...). Or maybe he needs training. It is fair to fire him without trying to understand?

Unfortunately, one possibility is dishonesty, as it is the case for your employee. And that's when surveillance comes in. You can flip the argument of "accept monitoring or get fired" around in favor of the employee as in "you are doing a poor job, normally we would fire you for that, but it may not be your fault, so if you allow us to make sure of that (by monitoring), we will try to find another solution".

Of course, it can and is often abused, but it is not black and white.

> You can flip the argument of "accept monitoring or get fired" around in favor of the employee as in "you are doing a poor job, normally we would fire you for that, but it may not be your fault, so if you allow us to make sure of that (by monitoring), we will try to find another solution".

An interesting parallel to ankle bracelets (also mentioned in the article). As a form of punishment, it's the justice system's way of saying, "you're doing a very poor job as a citizen, but we don't think it would be fair to put you in prison for it, so if you allow us, we'll impose some lesser restrictions and monitor your adherence, to make it easier for you to improve your behavior".

No country on the planet forces everyone to wear ankle bracelets by default.

That's what you get with larger organizations. But these large organization is what allows for the specialization and economies of scale that make up modern civilization.

For example, if you go to some big box store and forget to make you pay for something, I don't know many people who will point out the mistake and pay their due. The same people will probably be more inclined to do so if the shop in question is a small shop and they know the owner personally, even more so if he is an actual friend.

And the level of trust reflects that. Big box stores will monitor everything, because they know their customers can't be trusted, while friends will not even keep tabs. At the highest level, I don't know any country that trust their citizens when it comes to paying taxes, for good reason. There is an entire industry dedicated to more or less legal tax avoidance, opposed by an army of legislators and inspectors.

We have lost trust long ago. I'd say the turning point is the invention of the lock, thousands of years ago. I mean, isn't the lock and its information counterpart, cryptography, a symbol of distrust? For me, it is, but it is also what allows us to be secure among people we don't know.

Big box stores are also more likely to be associated with a lobbying group on their behalf, loss prevention scandals, and other things that deteriorate public trust.

You're right with the varying amounts of trust in different social structures, but recent developments in and adjacent to the crypto space are a whole new level of lack of trust.

The country may not trust their citizens when it comes to paying taxes, but it's not an absolute lack of trust. They set up regulations outlining rules and punishments, back them with various enforcement mechanisms, and... they trust it's enough for vast majority of the citizens.

They trust most people will be nudged towards paying the right amount of taxes - that's why they don't generally surveil every single transaction you're making. It's hard for a regular person to get on the IRS radar in a way other than interacting with government services in a weird way somehow. When they notice something suspicious, they will follow up, but the process set in the aforementioned laws is again very much trust-based, giving the suspect the ability to explain themselves at various stages, and not digging through one's entire life until late in the process. It's based on a reasonable assumption that most of the issues a country's IRS would flag are honest mistakes.

Same with every other process in most (all?) societies. There are directions, nudges, deterrents. Not total surveillance. But the newest trends in technology businesses seem to desperately want to move us towards the latter.

One of the most important philosophers of enlightenment/industrial era was Jeremy Bentham... of utilitarian fame.

He designed a building called a Panopticon, a design for a factory that allows many workers to be monitored closely by managers. He also thought it would make a good design for prisons, another interest areas. A lot of modern prisons resemble/derive from the Panopticon.

We need to remember that not everything is a new problem. Digitisation creates new privacy avenues which can be violate or defend. The bigger picture often stays the same. Solving problems by exercising more rigorous control over workers... in ways they don't like.

I think many HN-ers have a certain class blindness about these issues. A lot of jobs require urine tests, monitor employee's screens, motivate using cctv, etc. Some jobs actually require this. Often though, it's just a class thing. Urine tests for CS agents and warehouse workers. None for programmers.

The core difference that makes this new problem more worrying is, Panopticon only created a perception of being constantly watched. The managers/guards could see into every cell, but not all of them at the same time - but the workers/prisoners couldn't know if they're being watched at any given moment, so they had to assume they were.

As bad as it is, it's still better than actually being constantly watched.

Well... we'll see. It's not the first time for "actually being constantly watched" either. eg stazi/etc.

There is somewhat of a distinction between spying to sell you papmers and spying to maintain political power/stability. The latter can get bad fast. Ad businesses can be creepy, but their motivation is mostly just to sell you stuff. In both cases, it doesn't feel great at first... but you do get used to it.

Spying to make you sell pampers... that can go either way. Whatever lock-in powers Apple or FB wield... bosses have more power over employees than retailers over consumers. Add privacy belligerence to labour relations... third party ecosystems.

don't panic.

That would be totally illegal in Germany, and most of the EU. Not only the employee tracking and forcing them to install anything on their private devices, but also the data collection and not disclosing what is collected, where, and how long, and not implementing an automatic deletion.

Here in the UK government introduced zero rights employment just few days ago and that would be totally legal here.

As someone not from the UK: What is zero rights employment, and how is it different than before?

It's not a special employment status. As a contractor in the UK you have fewer rights (pensions, notice periods, unfair dismissal, etc.) than an employee, but used to have not-inconsiderable tax benefits to trade off against this.

Thanks to HMRC reforms known as IR35, a lot of contractors are now considered akin to "disguised employees" and taxed as such - thus being taxed like an employee without the requisite legal benefits.

Contractors have a tendency to frame the gradual clamping down on their lucrative tax loopholes in hyperbolic self-pitying ways like this. Pretty savvy I guess.

The net result is not so much that the loopholes have gone away, but that the contracts have. Employers are refusing to engage with the new IR35 system rather than risk getting on the wrong side of HMRC.

There is a subtle change however that makes huge difference. Companies now can make anyone a contractor (deemed employee) as now the company decides about status and essentially create a workforce without any worker's rights. The "not-inconsiderable" tax benefits ended around 2017.

> Companies now can make anyone a contractor

I don't think that's true. If you are enrolled on PAYE they can't just change you to a contractor.

They can do that, it's called "fire and re-hire". The PAYE position ends and new contract position starts, that you can take or leave.

Example: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/28/a-kick-in-t...

The UK Gov just got slapped by Apple and Google for trying to exploit the Corona Virus notifcation exposure system by trying to precisely locate people with the Covid contact tracing tracker App.

Do you have a link so I can read about this? Sounds bad

Oh wow, this has slipped me by entirely, have you got an article about it that I can read?

This website has a good summary https://norightsemployee.uk/faq

There is not much information about it, because that gone through as a change to IR35, so people slept on it, but in reality companies can only hire on "in-scope IR35" contract and bypass employment law altogether.

From the site:

> Is this site trying to sell me something?

> No! We're just here to promote the use of NREs because we believe this is our chance to increase the productivity and fortunes of Great Britain, especially post-Brexit.

So, disingenuous as hell - it's totally a protest site but claims to be pro.

Very large pinch of salt needed here.

Yes it is a protest site. I know a few people who already work this way though.

And there we go ... some indication that it is satrire would help because it just looks dodgy otherwise.

And now I don't trust you one bit, even though I may well be on the same side as you!

Unfortunately I couldn't find any other source that would have the issue presented in a digestible format.

There is another one http://www.loanchargeappg.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/H...

The UK has aspirations to be American, see: leaving the EU, deregulation and attempts to dismantle the NHS.

Sadly the UK are not the only European country with these types of aspirations. My best guess is that there are tightening relationships between the tops of the political and business classes in many countries. And they are beginning to realize they can engage in unmonitored corruption while running disinformation campaigns to cover their tracks. And then running for re-election on populist rhetoric to maintain the appearance that they are the opposite of their actual policies.

This happening on both the left and the right. Though I would say on the right the problem is considerably worse (this may just be my personal political bias, take it for what you will). The few people that are paying attention to this kind of misbehavior are the extremely informed. Who of course are a minority. Society is stratified across the globe and the very poor and poorly educated are being taken advantage of.

Most politicians don't believe they are engaging in corruption. But there are a limited number of government contracts to go around, the contracts are increasingly valuable, and on the demand side there are a growing number of humans and companies. At some point you might have half a dozen or even dozens of "qualified" looking applications for a government contract. And the procurement people within any given government usually end up picking between the many possible qualified looking applicants by the fact that someone has a social tie to the inside.

The only possible solution I can think of is accepting some type of randomization in the assignment of government contracts. Because proximity to power is way too important right now. And the politicians don't feel like they are engaging in corruptions they believe they are giving their friends who have risen through the meritocracy a deserved opportunity. There is some truth to this but the problem is their friends aren't the only people who have earned similar opportunities.

This user is referring to IR35. It's been given the nickname "No Rights Employment" by those affected by it.

The change to IR35 lets companies decide the status of the worker hired as a contractor - the contract only needs a few clauses to ensure it falls in-scope and it means that a deemed employee is not a subject of employment law as a result. Now nothing stops e.g. Amazon or Uber from hiring any kind of worker this way. Some MPs now urge that this gets changed so that worker in-scope would enjoy employment rights and they are hoping this will happen during this Finance Bill. My guess is companies are going to wait few months and see.

> Here in the UK government introduced zero rights employment just few days ago and that would be totally legal here.

I am resolutely not a fan of our current UK government and they will certainly work to weaken worker's rights, but (absent of any corroberating references) this is just BS.

It's not BS. It is packaged as changes to IR35 and sold as "making sure that workers who work as employees pay the same tax as employees." More info: https://norightsemployee.uk/faq

Some MPs woke up quite too late: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252499096/Loan-Charge-Gr...

The articles refer to those workers as contractors and mainly focus on IT market, but these rules can be applied to any workers.

Thank you for clarifying. But how would IR35 apply in this case - she was an employee anyway, not a contractor and did not have her own limited company.

There is a plausible approach https://norightsemployee.uk/step-by-step but it doesn't address the limited company issue.

It is possible to work inside IR35 without having own company, but I have not seen many materials about that, so I'll leave it.

Company formation is very quick and can be automated and there are already companies who automate accounting related to this.

The structure would have to look like this: - deemed employee gets a job offer, he or she accepts

- company creates limited company on worker's behalf and creates an agreement with a fee payer - it must contain clauses limiting substitution and few other to ensure it falls in scope of IR35.

- Fee payer is an intermediary between employer and worker that pays tax on behalf of the worker and sends his or hers salary to their company account. (these companies already exist)

- all accounting for worker's company can be automated (there will be no Corporation Tax to pay etc.)

This may seem complex, but I can imagine it gets streamlined quickly when companies see the benefits.

The site you reference reeks of disingenuity, so I shall regard your arguments with a great degree of skepticism.

Which is annoying, as I am very uncomfortable with the march towards zero hour contracts and the like - if you are genuine and not just an IT contractor who is pissed off that they can't do the usual IR35 tax dodges, then you do yourself a disservice citing such a ropey website :-(

I linked to this website as I thought despite this "let's help corporations exploit workers" theme, the information it has is quite concise and true.

You can also check this report http://www.loanchargeappg.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/H...

This is not only affecting IT contractors but anyone can be hired with such contract.

> The articles refer to those workers as contractors and mainly focus on IT market, but these rules can be applied to any workers.

But you say things like this from a reply above, and they simply do not apply to "any workers" (ie. employees) - only those that are specifically taken on as contractors. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow to find that it applies to me as I'm an employee, not a contractor.

I know this is your special hobby horse, but it has no bearing on this story.

Ok, but company can fire you and give you a contractor contract as take it or leave it.

It's legal. An example from today:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/14/hundreds-br...

That story has nothing to do with IR35.

Really, I could swear you were a right-wing troll trying to get me to care less about employee rights by being so obscure about it all.

It seems like you are moving goal posts. I demonstrated that a mechanism to convert employee into a contractor is possible. The British Gas could have given them any type of contract.

Thankfully that's not EU anymore.

Most of the employement practices in NA would be illegal in the EU. It seems really bad over there.

"most", really?

Sick leave, health care, at will employment and paid time off seem to be massively different, so I think ‘most’ may be justified.

If we only talk about device usage I can imagine objecting about the word ‘most’

Tracking by itself is bad. But the request to install the tracker on the personal phone, instead of a dedicated device, is completely unacceptable.

I would like to see the employer reaction if someone has a Librem phone or any non Android/iOS mobile.

Yet it's +800$ for this short satisfaction.

You can get this sort of satisfaction for much less money. Try a Volla phone [1] or a KaiOS based phone [2]. That's always funny when some services assume that just having an iOS or Android App (and no equivalent web-page) is enough to cater to everyone.

Especially in the corona-virus crisis it will prove interesting whether some mandated "contact tracing" or "vaccination pass" style Apps are going to effectively turn into an Android/iOS Smartphone requirement for everyday life.

In Germany it's e.g. already impossible to use the DHL parcel receival stations without Android/iOS. Loss of some ticket options for public transport also seems to be on the horizon. Also forget about car- and bike-sharing.

Also some banks try to force you to install their own proprietary TFA app for online payment (even if you just use your credit card in an online shop).

[1] https://volla.online/en/index.html

[2] https://sites.google.com/view/bananahackers/devices/nokia-81...

Is the DHL app really necessary or can you fallback to SMS? Got an Android, so no problem for me, but I'm wondering...

It wasn't necessary as of some months ago. I don't have a smart phone and at first they would send a SMS with TAN, but now they switched to sending an email with the TAN.

There may be some grandfathering of old accounts: accounts that have email notification enabled, can still access the Packstation using mTAN transmitted by email. However, once the email notification is disabled, there seems to be no way to re-enable it (and maybe it is disabled per default for new accounts) [1]

[1] https://www.giga.de/tipp/dhl-mtan-anfordern-ohne-handy-das-s...

Interesting. Will have a look in my account, it's a pretty old one, maybe I still got that option.

Too late. I already mentioned it some time ago [1]. Basically not only I can't use non-Android, non-Apple operating systems here, but the programs mandated by the different banks (and even government agencies) are checking for "rooted/compromised devices" and other fancy-speak like that which obviously trip frequently on non-sanctioned-by-Google devices.

i.e. you need a real, Google android device. Stuff such as the Jolla Android emulator just doesn't work with these programs.

At first, I could not pay my parking tickets, and I didn't complain much since I don't have that many parking tickets. Then it started with e.g. mandatory usage of the COVID-app-of-the-day before entering restaurants, but again I didn't complain much since I don't really want to go into restaurants with the virus still flying. Now the banks require it and they are ignoring my repeated requests to go back to simpler paper/card OTP variants. How long until it is mandatory to file taxes?

The framework for making open source operating systems irrelevant is being laid before my own eyes and I can't do anything about it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25766703

They'd just force you to buy one (if evil) / issue a cheap one from company (if friendly).

Up to a couple of years ago I didn't have a (modern) smartphone, I had a Symbian Samsung and a LG Cookie. Had to upgrade because the canteen payment scrapped their "prepay credit" payment mechanism based on ID and would just take a live-generated-in-browser QR code instead. There was basically no cost to still support the old system but people like me are so few that it doesn't matter.