U.S. Consumer Watchdog Cautions Businesses on Surveillance of Workers
wsj.com
wsj.com
https://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/can-an-employer-mo...
Unrelated, I really wish this quote "The Court relied principally on the fact that the employee was an at-will employee and the employer had no legal interest in his future employment plans. " made its way into more lawsuits.
The story of the computer, the internet, and by extension all work on the computer is the opposite. It's seen as an element of the common people or the nouveau rich. The people least likely to be using a computer are the rich, powerful and well connected. Thus, no legal protections exist.
As opposed to now when bipartisan support for industrial policy and tariffs, or that we need to crack down on big tech? The decade before there was bipartisan support for the war on terror.
That's what bribes will get you
> The decade before there was bipartisan support for the war on terror.
Of course generally both parties supported giving themselves more power. There were a few holdouts with integrity though.
So when the government does nothing, it's "the major parties at the time pushed the lie that government can do no good for society" but when it does something it's "That's what bribes will get you"?
Computers are "newcomers", and by that point there was big political push for mass surveillance and anti-privacy propaganda was picking up. People have gotten less privacy conscious as time goes on so our laws regarding technology reflect that.
Also the nature of the tech matters, I think. Post is fairly simple to ensure privacy with, same with phone. You have to go out of your way to open things up or record them. Phones calls, by their nature, exist on the wire while they're happening.
But computers store things and that's a huge part of their usefulness. If you're already saving stuff to disk, which you probably are, there's no friction really with using that for nefarious uses. For example, request logging in a corporate environment. Although this doesn't explain things like recording screens.
The FBI was created in 1908.
The CIA was created in 1947.
The Internet was invented in 1983.
.
The government was a heck of a lot less overpowered and nosy back when phones were new than when the Internet was new.
I'm guessing its not "weak government" but actually "good government"
And that was just federal. The Tenth Amendment meant wiretapping laws were on the books in states from the mid-1800s, securing the natural privacy of use of the telegraph as a protected medium of communication almost immediately following its inception.
The extreme granularity of visibility and control employers have is a very new phenomenon. No doubt they benefit from it, but whether it's mutually beneficial is up for debate.
So here's a direct link:
https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-takes...
It strikes me how absurd that argument is. It almost deliberately ignores that all citizens are private entities and would do whatever they want were it not for laws restricting the ability of one person to abridge the happiness of another.
So how in the world have we become a society that's okay with TLS inspection "because security and compliance" but not okay with recorded phone calls? It's a crock of crap. Traditionally, the social value of whatever enterprise wants to engage in that type of spying would need to out-weight the fundamental right to privacy of all its employees. And you'd of course need to demonstrate that e.g. TLS inspection is actually required to sustain that immense value.
Laws exist to make unethical creepy things also illegal things. You don't get a pass on being subject to limits on your ability delete the privacy of other citizens just because you're not the government. At least not in my book.
And it's not really how things work. Your employer can't make hiring decisions based on protected classes or political alignment. So why should they be allowed to subject you to undue invasion of privacy? Is Civil Rights Act the only relevant legal framework these days?
What are you talking about? Call center workers are recorded all the time. People working in finance must conduct work conversations on a monitored medium, lest they get smacked by the SEC.
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...
If you don't want the company to monitor your instagram browsing, do it from your phone, not your work machine.
I lead citing your response as being something I don’t understand at a social-political level. From where does a company derive its power and authority to TLS inspect aka spy on its employees when it is by and large illegal to wiretap employees outside of specific allowed circumstances? Why is this legal and why do we broadly accept it?
Checkout https://honest.security/
They're both legal with proper notices. It's illegal to wiretap phones, but if you slap a "this conversation is being recorded for quality control purposes" it's suddenly legal. The same exists for TLS inspection. It requires the company's root certificate to be installed, which typically is only done on corporate machines. Such machines usually have a login banner along the lines of "this machine is for work purposes only and all usage is monitored".
But generally, your employer is not allowed to arbitrarily record your phone calls.
Never log into personal accounts on an employer's devices (work phone, computer, etc) or networks.
Avoid using a company vehicle for personal needs.
Never say anything you wouldn't say in a higher up's or coworker's presence over slack, email, any communication platform used by coworkers and/or owned/authorized by an employer.
This kind of monitoring happens, all your shit will be pryed on (personal accounts or otherwise), it's very common (in the US), it will be used against you, it is legal (in the US).
This is a warning not just from personal experience, but it's also been the experience of many others.
Germany is one of the only (maybe is the only?) countries that has made this kind of bullshit illegal.
That’s the problem with Congress abdicating its duties and assigning rule making to administrative bodies and their respective courts instead of passing actual laws. Instead of being upset at whatever figurehead sits at the top you would do well to write your senators and representatives instead.