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Comment by wcski | Hacker News Reader

This article lost me when it counted identity verification software as "surveillance tech".

If the identity document mandated to be verified is one that allows not only private businesses but also the government to build profiles and use them against private citizens with no legal recourse in case of misuse (criminal or otherwise) and is trivial to obtain for an adversary, it very much is "surveillance tech". Please look up everything you can about the horrors of the identity scheme called "AADHAAR" in India.

I get where you are coming from, but identity is the foundation of surveillance.

I mean regardless of whether it has value in being used, it's pretty much, by definition, "surveillance tech."

Eh. Depends on how it's deployed and used, doesn't it? To me, it's like calling a bouncer at a club a private investigator.

No. I said "by definition" which means based on the meaning of the word not the context.

You also hedged with "pretty much".

If everything is "surveillance tech" then nothing is.

Certain functions like remote employee clock-in with geolocation (literally the first example company in the article) are perfectly reasonable to record the employee's GPS coordinates, in my opinion. If you're clocking in at the job site, having some record that you were actually at the job site isn't an invasion of privacy.

My location is irrelevant to my employer, in most cases. What do they care if I am at home, at the home of someone else, in a hotel, or camping out in a yurt, so long as I do the work, attend the meetings, and get my job done?

One word: taxes

That has nothing to do with my day-to-day location.

One word: Compliance

> That has nothing to do with my day-to-day location.

In some US states (and some international jurisdictions, as well) you owe income and possibly other taxes (and your employer may be responsible for withholding and reporting related to those taxes) on income from work done in the jurisdiction even if it is only a single day of work, and even if you are not a tax resident, so, yes, it has something to do with your day-to-day location.

I didn't say it was or was not unreasonable, I said it was surveillance by definition (i.e. based on what the world means).

i always think about e911 calling for enterprise VoIP software phones. In order to make sure the calls go the right 911 local call center it is required to have the user enter the address they are using the computer at. It's the law and the fines for routing to the 911 center of last resort aren't cheap. And thats just the tip of iceberg if required employer surveillance just to follow the damn law.

https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/voip_and_911_service...

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