Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on an adventure,
Speaker 1: but will return shortly. They call me Ben. We're joined
Speaker 1: as always with our super producer Paul Mission controled decades.
Speaker 1: Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: It's a new year. Hope everybody was able to get
Speaker 1: some kind of vacations, some kind of holiday slash family time,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us listening now are officially returned
Speaker 1: to work. A holiday season has uh sadly concluded, and
Speaker 1: so as we speak, there are billions of people across
Speaker 1: the planet who are firing up the old laptop, or
Speaker 1: they're you know, putting on the uniform. They're they're starting
Speaker 1: the company van, and they're off on another another episode
Speaker 1: of trying to stay alive in may fortune what they
Speaker 1: say in the Hunger Games and fortunate favorite the Bold,
Speaker 1: Maybe odds be ever in your favor. Matt, you remember
Speaker 1: that song. I always feel like someone's watching me. Somebody
Speaker 1: was watching me. Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that
Speaker 1: a lot as we were researching today's episode. This is
Speaker 1: Orwellian and you know what, fellow conspiracy realist, after thinking
Speaker 1: about it and after digging into this, I can't speak
Speaker 1: for Matt or Mission control, but I do hope you're
Speaker 1: listening to this episode at work, yes, just hopefully not
Speaker 1: on your company issued device. Don't don't do that, right right? Uh?
Speaker 1: If you? The reason this is a cool thing to
Speaker 1: listen to while you're at work is because it gives
Speaker 1: it a little extra punch, a little extra immediacy, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, Matt. People have heard this joke on
Speaker 1: the show before about how stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know has ruined our search histories, and that is
Speaker 1: that is true. But the hazard of an oddball search
Speaker 1: history pales in comparison to what many other people have
Speaker 1: experienced in the workplace. Especially over the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: life turned upside down across the planet. Millions and millions
Speaker 1: of people found themselves let's see, battling disease, financial woes,
Speaker 1: mental health, social unrest, all the while still trying to
Speaker 1: hold down a solid job for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: The world will never be the same. And this this
Speaker 1: goes for employers as well as employee ease. Our episode
Speaker 1: today is about work, it's about watching, It's about ultimately
Speaker 1: who watches the Watchman. So yeah, yeah, and this I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, man, but this, this one spooked
Speaker 1: me out a little too. Oh, definitely, especially because of
Speaker 1: the way work has changed for many of us, especially
Speaker 1: the people right now making this show. Uh, we work
Speaker 1: from home now and for to a large extent, and
Speaker 1: we probably will for oh, I don't know the foreseeable future,
Speaker 1: because because of the safety benefits of being all isolated
Speaker 1: in separate places. And we're we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 1: So let's just talk about statistics while we're sitting here
Speaker 1: and discussing this stuff, right, Yeah, here are the facts.
Speaker 1: If you go to the U. S. Bureau of Labor
Speaker 1: and Statistics, you'll see that across about one in four
Speaker 1: employed people teleworked or worked from home for pay in
Speaker 1: some capacity. That doesn't mean they were all locked up
Speaker 1: hermiting away. That means there were a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were like, I'll go in one day a week,
Speaker 1: or I will be gone for you know, my office
Speaker 1: is closed for a month and we're working remotely. So
Speaker 1: all at all, more than a third of all the
Speaker 1: households in the US reported working from home more frequently
Speaker 1: than they had before COVID hit. But we also found
Speaker 1: some socio economic sociodemographic divides. If you are a younger worker,
Speaker 1: you're less likely to have teleworked due to the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And that's where you know, we learned things like essential workers.
Speaker 1: A lot of younger people who were maybe just getting
Speaker 1: their first job out of high school, during high school
Speaker 1: something like that, they started off in places like retail
Speaker 1: operations or the service industry, and they had to go
Speaker 1: into work in person because of the nature of their profession. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's something that also comes into play with these statistics.
Speaker 1: The Census Bureau found that that economic divide that we're
Speaker 1: all seeing accelerate came into play here as well. People
Speaker 1: who made more money tended to more easily telework than
Speaker 1: those who made less money. So if you look at
Speaker 1: the Census Bureau, they found that in the highest earning
Speaker 1: households with incomes of two hundred thousand dollars or more,
Speaker 1: that's combined household seventy three point one. Seventy three point one,
Speaker 1: we're able to switch to telework. Again, like we're able
Speaker 1: to switch to telework. And in contrast to that, only
Speaker 1: twelve point seven percent of households earning under twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year where we're able to telework at
Speaker 1: all because they again, like you said, then they had
Speaker 1: to go into work for one reason or another. Yeah, exactly. No.
Speaker 1: Let's do a thought experiment, folks. Imagine that you are
Speaker 1: a manager. Imagine you're a CEO or what have you.
Speaker 1: You have a team of people, and you have a
Speaker 1: group of task If you have your own boss to
Speaker 1: report to, you need to be able to tell that
Speaker 1: person that you've knocked out these tasks or you've made
Speaker 1: progress on them. And of course, if you are a
Speaker 1: good manager, your goal is to make sure your employees
Speaker 1: grow professionally. You want to set them up for success.
Speaker 1: But now your whole team, your whole posse, has turned
Speaker 1: their homes into isolated work cubicles. You can't walk by
Speaker 1: like that office space guy with a cup of coffee anymore.
Speaker 1: You have to find some other way to keep track
Speaker 1: of what they're doing. Could you do a weekly zoom meeting. Sure,
Speaker 1: why not? But is that enough? That's when managers and
Speaker 1: employers started asking themselves what else can we do? And
Speaker 1: this leads us to the new age of work surveillance.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just think about this too. Um folks,
Speaker 1: If you remember the last time you got a new job,
Speaker 1: you probably had a bunch of paperwork. I know that.
Speaker 1: You know, when our overlords have changed over the years,
Speaker 1: we have to go through the rigamarole of reading all
Speaker 1: the paperwork again. You know, codes of ethics, financial info,
Speaker 1: insurance stuff, all the all the really juicy reads. But
Speaker 1: in this mountain of paperwork, there's some interesting things. You
Speaker 1: will often find tucked away somewhere in there a statement
Speaker 1: saying something like, any activity you do on company time
Speaker 1: with company equipment needs to be work related. Uh, and
Speaker 1: you don't have maybe intellectual property rights, which sounds abstract,
Speaker 1: but it's really important. This applies to the idea of
Speaker 1: patents and inventions. Like let's say mission control. While we're recording,
Speaker 1: he's secretly using his work machine to invent a new
Speaker 1: kind of case. Ada. That's what. Yeah, then our bosses,
Speaker 1: let's say this case to do blows up. It's like
Speaker 1: transformed the world's understanding of sandwiches. But our bosses, say,
Speaker 1: came up with this while you were at work using
Speaker 1: our equipment, So this case idea belongs to us, pal.
Speaker 1: The problem is how do you improve that it occurred
Speaker 1: on that computer? And when yes, yes, and that's I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously that's an extreme example. It's not unprecedented. Most people,
Speaker 1: most companies aren't going to go to court over case ideas.
Speaker 1: Though for the record, I would watch a show called
Speaker 1: case Adia Court. I think the idea has got legs.
Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right, Matt, Like you're you're if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this, your job, in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: is monitoring you. Like, that's as old as the idea
Speaker 1: of clocking in and clocking out on a punch card.
Speaker 1: The issue is, especially nowadays, the process may be much
Speaker 1: more robust, much more conspiratorial, and much less visible, and
Speaker 1: you might think, and it's only going to accelerate in
Speaker 1: the future. Before we move on, I have to ask you, Matt.
Speaker 1: I want to put you on the spot. But do
Speaker 1: you remember please? Oh good, all right, we'll put us
Speaker 1: both on the spot. Do you remember a few months
Speaker 1: ago we were talking about how to get under kind
Speaker 1: of under the hood of your laptop and see what
Speaker 1: other entities were contacting your machine. Well, yes, Ben, one
Speaker 1: of the things you can do if you have a Mac,
Speaker 1: you can check your activity monitor. That's a fun way
Speaker 1: to find out if there's software running in the background
Speaker 1: that you're unaware of that's maybe been installed without your knowledge,
Speaker 1: because you can do that with boss wear. If you're
Speaker 1: running a Windows machine, you check your task Manager and
Speaker 1: do the same thing. We can talk about it and
Speaker 1: get into a little later. But if you somehow block
Speaker 1: the monitoring that your employers have installed on your computer, um,
Speaker 1: that's probably going to cause more problems than just if
Speaker 1: you don't know work around it in some other way. Uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, we've we found out you could do that.
Speaker 1: There's also certain things like antivirus software that might be
Speaker 1: on your machine that's either installed by you or your employer,
Speaker 1: and that's a good way to monitor when things connect
Speaker 1: to your computer, right if something physically has been plugged
Speaker 1: in of some device, or if something virtually connects to
Speaker 1: your machine. And a lot of these things aren't necessarily nefarious,
Speaker 1: it's it's important to establish that from the get go
Speaker 1: because it turns out a lot of them are very
Speaker 1: much nefarious, insidious, dangerous. Here's where it gets crazy. So
Speaker 1: companies struggled during the pandemic to maintain control and visibility
Speaker 1: with an increasingly remote workforce. You used at our word
Speaker 1: of the day just a second ago, Matt bossware. This
Speaker 1: is just like malware software hardware. Bossware is described vibes
Speaker 1: types of software genre software, as well as an industry
Speaker 1: that is built entirely upon monitoring employees, monitoring productivity, even
Speaker 1: gamifying as Microsoft and Amazon have have done. And if
Speaker 1: you're if you're a data nerd, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cool stuff you can do. You can compare things, you
Speaker 1: can build tables, you can look at, uh, the metadata
Speaker 1: of people's time and how they spend it. So if
Speaker 1: you you know, if one of your employees is a
Speaker 1: night owl, like someone who is regularly burning the midnight oil,
Speaker 1: then you will know. You will see, oh, these emails
Speaker 1: are being sent out at eight am, but they're being
Speaker 1: scheduled at like midnight. You know that that gives you
Speaker 1: a sense of what your crew is doing. And boss
Speaker 1: wear is usually going to be on a computer, a smartphone,
Speaker 1: maybe a tablet. The important thing about it is it
Speaker 1: has admin privileges. It can access all the info that
Speaker 1: happens on that device. Yeah, it more or less can
Speaker 1: collect anything and everything that happens. Right, And theoretically, these systems,
Speaker 1: the software, and these enterprise clients, they're all about a
Speaker 1: TPS BEEN that's attendance, time, productivity and security. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's what it is, a t p S. This
Speaker 1: stuff already existed in some form or another. As we said,
Speaker 1: you know, regardless of where you work, if you have
Speaker 1: a quote unquote office job, then you probably have some
Speaker 1: kind of I T department or some kind of subcontracted
Speaker 1: I T service, and they will, for instance, probably get
Speaker 1: alerts if someone accesses a not Safer work website on
Speaker 1: company equipment. And I think everybody can agree that's pretty reasonable, right,
Speaker 1: I'm with come on that. That's it's a small battle
Speaker 1: you've had to fight a few times over the years
Speaker 1: just because this show is not safe for work. Again, like,
Speaker 1: I hope you're not listening on your work device, but
Speaker 1: I hope you are listening at work. Yes, yes, so
Speaker 1: so yeah, this this is something that we have run
Speaker 1: into in the course of stuff. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to know with you know, not not too much sort
Speaker 1: of sound and fury from the suits, but we have
Speaker 1: you know, we we've had to like this has happened
Speaker 1: to Jonathan Strickland on tech stuff too. This happened to
Speaker 1: a lot of our colleagues because you have to dive
Speaker 1: into primary sources, and some of those primary sources are
Speaker 1: in some pretty dicey places online. Uh. And that's just
Speaker 1: the nature of our pursuit, which is somewhat distinct and
Speaker 1: different from a lot of other jobs. But the same
Speaker 1: rules still apply. If you have an I T department
Speaker 1: that gets these alert they're probably not obsessively like going
Speaker 1: employee by employee and reading everyone's browser history. The process
Speaker 1: has probably automated and it gets flagged, sort of the
Speaker 1: way that state level surveillance of citizens works. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that is changing in the remote set up right, it
Speaker 1: was it was much more of a flagging system before
Speaker 1: employees were far far away from the manager's physical position.
Speaker 1: M hm. And this goes more extreme. Here's one that
Speaker 1: you may have on your on your workplace gadgets that
Speaker 1: you don't know about. It's something called a key logger, Matt.
Speaker 1: Key loggers are scary partially because of how effective they are,
Speaker 1: but I said, I think also because of how invisible
Speaker 1: they can be and how just how much information they
Speaker 1: can give out, there's a lot potential for shenanigans. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I imagine that someone can monitor every single key stroke
Speaker 1: that you make. That means every website you've ever visited,
Speaker 1: if you type it in, every password you've ever entered,
Speaker 1: if you type it in, uh, any message that you
Speaker 1: send to anyone with a maybe a messages app or
Speaker 1: with a text messaging service, or even WhatsApp or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Uh, it can get monitored. And it's way scarier.
Speaker 1: I think if this is being monitored by somebody that
Speaker 1: you just don't know, if it's you know, your employer,
Speaker 1: maybe your direct boss or their boss, that's could stink.
Speaker 1: But it's not the same as if it's you know,
Speaker 1: being tracked by some other third party that you're unaware
Speaker 1: of exactly. Your email can also be searched. Calls made
Speaker 1: from company issued devices can be not just recorded, but
Speaker 1: monitoring in real time. So there's definitely the potential for
Speaker 1: someone to be eavesdropping, which again is something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people have just sort of accepted as normal.
Speaker 1: Like I I don't know about you. Well, I do
Speaker 1: know about you. We both, for a very long time
Speaker 1: have taken it for granted that if a camera is
Speaker 1: not physically covered up, you should treat it as though
Speaker 1: it is recording, sort of like a gun should always
Speaker 1: be treated as though it is loaded. Dude, do you
Speaker 1: remember when we were we went around the office and
Speaker 1: in all the studios we started, Well, I I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think you did it too, but I know I
Speaker 1: personally applied tape to many of the studio imax and
Speaker 1: and other machines that just have cameras installed on them,
Speaker 1: just as a like, if you need it, you can
Speaker 1: take the tape off. Yeah, and you were I important
Speaker 1: in your defense. In our defense, we weren't doing like
Speaker 1: sketchy stuff. We weren't even you know, It's not like
Speaker 1: it wasn't like, oh, no, one, we're secretly selling quayludes
Speaker 1: or something like that. We weren't even you know, in
Speaker 1: our noses. Well, I wasn't. No, we weren't doing anything
Speaker 1: to ferries. It's just the fact that it's what you said.
Speaker 1: It's a it's like a loaded gun that's pointed at
Speaker 1: all times, not really obviously and you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to downplay guns or up play cameras. It's just
Speaker 1: something we should be aware of exactly. And there are
Speaker 1: numerous other examples of this monitoring, like some software. We'll
Speaker 1: just take frequent, periodic screenshots of whatever is on your monitor.
Speaker 1: And at this point let's pause for word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: See who at our job is spying on us, and
Speaker 1: then we'll return to dive into the deeper waters surrounding
Speaker 1: workplace surveillance. Okay, we're back. Like we said, this is
Speaker 1: kind of normalized now. This idea of being monitored at
Speaker 1: work is something that the majority of employees were guardless
Speaker 1: of their specific industries, have come to accept. Some employers, yes,
Speaker 1: are much more extreme than others. Our Offit is pretty
Speaker 1: las fair so far as we know, which is another
Speaker 1: thing we have to bring up in today's episode. But
Speaker 1: there are really really extreme examples, and one that you
Speaker 1: will run into time and time again is Amazon. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, Amazon, so many methods to track your employers
Speaker 1: in so many different positions. And let's just use one
Speaker 1: quick example here. Imagine that you drive for a living.
Speaker 1: This is what you do. You're You're an Amazon delivery
Speaker 1: person and inside the vehicle with you at all times.
Speaker 1: At all times is a three sixty degree camera that
Speaker 1: can see anything and everything that you do, every action,
Speaker 1: and it's constantly monitoring and judging you. Did you yawn
Speaker 1: a little bit? Oh bro? Why did you do that?
Speaker 1: Don't do that? Did you take a hand off the
Speaker 1: wheel for a second? You didn't just touch your cell phone?
Speaker 1: Did you like there? It really does monitor everything, and
Speaker 1: it monitors what how much time you spend behind the wheel,
Speaker 1: how much time you're away from that driver's seat to
Speaker 1: deliver packages at a certain location. It's intense stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's why you know it's I would say it's a
Speaker 1: direct reason why you you may have heard these stories.
Speaker 1: We've heard many about drivers having to urinate in the
Speaker 1: car in order to keep their productivity rating up and
Speaker 1: to prevent them from getting in trouble with their little
Speaker 1: three sixty spy that lives with them. And transporting packages
Speaker 1: is an incredibly difficult job. Whether it's the postal service,
Speaker 1: whether it's FedEx, whether it's Amazon, people are pretty hard
Speaker 1: on delivery drivers and it's important to remember that a
Speaker 1: lot of times drivers are being forced to go go
Speaker 1: through certain optimized routes they are, you know, they have
Speaker 1: a route dictated to them, and they can in some
Speaker 1: cases be penalized if they say, well, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense for me to go this way, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go this other way, you know traffic, or I have
Speaker 1: another drop that's just down the street, let me knock
Speaker 1: that out. Well, you know, Ben, it makes a lot
Speaker 1: more sense why there's been a massive uptick in videos
Speaker 1: of delivery drivers like maybe tossing a package a little
Speaker 1: bit to keep down the amount of time they're spending
Speaker 1: in one place. That's it's crazy to think about. And
Speaker 1: you know, it certainly doesn't excuse destroying the contents of
Speaker 1: a package by throwing it or something. But you could
Speaker 1: totally see why what happened. Yeah, absolutely can. And the
Speaker 1: companies that are selling this tracking software, they're making it killing.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about them. They're they're doing fine, we assure you.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of criticism coming out, and many
Speaker 1: critics are increasingly concerned about what happens when your office
Speaker 1: becomes your home and your company's little version of Big
Speaker 1: Brother becomes in a very real way, like a nosy
Speaker 1: roommate that's hovering over your shoulder. Like, for instance, Matt,
Speaker 1: you are you are recording in your house, in your office.
Speaker 1: I'm recording in a room in my place that I
Speaker 1: just converted into an office. You know, this is just
Speaker 1: a room that I converted into an office as well. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: we just we're working in conversion rooms, I guess. But
Speaker 1: our personal lives also occur in these rooms, you know.
Speaker 1: And the question then becomes a question about thresholds, boundaries,
Speaker 1: and comfort levels. How much should your employer be able
Speaker 1: to know about your personal life? Uh? Found a great
Speaker 1: quote by an outfit called the Electronic Frontier Foundation the
Speaker 1: e f F. We've talked about them on the show before,
Speaker 1: and I like how they put this. They put it
Speaker 1: pretty succinctly when they talk about when when they introduce
Speaker 1: the concept of bosswear, and when they talk about how
Speaker 1: these tools are sold to employers and how they can
Speaker 1: affect employees. And they say, some vendors build their tools
Speaker 1: as automatic time tracking or workplace analytics software. Others market
Speaker 1: to companies concerned about data breaches or intellectual property theft.
Speaker 1: We'll call these tools collectively bosswear. Hey, here's the term there.
Speaker 1: It is the e f F is using it. So
Speaker 1: I think we were totally fine and using bosswear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's continue with the quote. While aimed at helping employers,
Speaker 1: boss ware puts workers privacy and security at risk by
Speaker 1: logging every click and key stroke, covertly gathering information for lawsuits,
Speaker 1: and using other spying features that go far beyond what
Speaker 1: is necessary and proportionate to manage a workforce. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: their their idea is that this is overkilled basically, That's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the crux of their argument. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clear that the e f F has a horse
Speaker 1: in this race. They have an opinion, they have a
Speaker 1: badger in the bag because again, they're a nonprofit that
Speaker 1: is intensely focused on worrying about privacy and the digital sphere.
Speaker 1: That is their job, right, So it's not hard to
Speaker 1: see why they have all people would think this is
Speaker 1: a bad thing. Remotely controlling a laptop camera in an office,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. But then imagine you have a camera
Speaker 1: that turns on without your consent in your own bedroom,
Speaker 1: like after work hours. You know, now it's like nine thirty,
Speaker 1: you're kicking it, you know, on the bed, uh, next
Speaker 1: to your desk or something. I don't know, you're watching
Speaker 1: always sunning in Philadelphia, or you're you're knitting because that's
Speaker 1: your new hobby during the pandemic for some reason. In
Speaker 1: this scenario, and all of a sudden, you notice that
Speaker 1: little little red light on your camera whatever your devices
Speaker 1: has popped on and you don't know how long it's
Speaker 1: been on, and you don't know why it's on. You
Speaker 1: can go and shut it off yourself or cover it,
Speaker 1: but now you know someone else can drive your car
Speaker 1: as it were. Add to this the even more black
Speaker 1: mirrorsque part of this. I believe there's functionality in some
Speaker 1: devices to have the camera on without seeming as though
Speaker 1: it is on. But just in in many of these
Speaker 1: software's defense, it is only used on company time, right,
Speaker 1: So if there's a certain number of work hours you're
Speaker 1: supposed to keep in a week, and those work hours
Speaker 1: are between a certain time, then generally it could or
Speaker 1: would be active and then would be inactive, and other
Speaker 1: times that isn't always the case. And you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many variables that go into that. This is a
Speaker 1: real scenario that could happen. Yeah, yeah, And at this
Speaker 1: point there might be some folks in the audience who
Speaker 1: some of us are thinking, well, well, this is kind
Speaker 1: of are we being a sensationalistic or guys, calm down,
Speaker 1: it's the Internet. Privacy doesn't exist anymore. But before we
Speaker 1: ask if this is alarmist, let's look at some of
Speaker 1: those general categories of monitoring. What we have just talked
Speaker 1: about is the most common type of surveillance activity monitoring.
Speaker 1: It's a log of which apps you use, which websites
Speaker 1: you visit. It could include stuff like who you email
Speaker 1: and when, including the subject line metadata. It could also
Speaker 1: include posts you make on social media on your work computer, tablet,
Speaker 1: or phones. Let's say you just got hot news story
Speaker 1: or an announcement and you go to Twitter or you
Speaker 1: go to Facebook and you just pop it up there
Speaker 1: while you're thinking about it. Then your employer will know
Speaker 1: about that as well. And this is one of the
Speaker 1: most widely accepted things. Just assume people know what you're
Speaker 1: doing on the work computer, but the boss where that records,
Speaker 1: you know, physical input on your mouth or your keyboard,
Speaker 1: You might be surprised by by the process that occurs there.
Speaker 1: This takes a look at a minute by minute breakdown,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, what are Ben and
Speaker 1: Matt typing what are Matt and Ben reading and when
Speaker 1: are they reading it? And then that is used as
Speaker 1: kind of a stand in for productivity, and anybody has
Speaker 1: worked in the field of research before, you know that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff you might be doing that
Speaker 1: looks inactive because you're just you're reading a book, right,
Speaker 1: or you're deep in a weird government PDF. And that's
Speaker 1: the one pager on for like three hours. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're right, And it's a weird thing to bring into
Speaker 1: our world. Been because for me, and let's say the
Speaker 1: last the forty five minutes to the run up of recording,
Speaker 1: I stopped reading and I started jumping in YouTube to
Speaker 1: see how this has been reported on by other outfits, right,
Speaker 1: And so I'm literally sitting here at my computer with
Speaker 1: my cameras covered of course, and my microphone turned off,
Speaker 1: but I'm watching YouTube videos and I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: take in as much information as i can to see
Speaker 1: how other people have covered it. And if this, you know,
Speaker 1: if this system or one of these systems was watching
Speaker 1: me and monitoring me, it would look like I'm literally
Speaker 1: just watching YouTube videos, um, which is what I was doing.
Speaker 1: But it was part of my job. So It's just
Speaker 1: a strange thing. You know, if you're if your job
Speaker 1: is based on you know, a quantitative number of tasks,
Speaker 1: like in you know, the let's say the Amazon drivers circumstance,
Speaker 1: this specific thing monitoring your computer isn't gonna help. But
Speaker 1: a you know, watching how many tasks are done in
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time is like, in a weird,
Speaker 1: messed up, dystopian way, something that an employer should kind
Speaker 1: of be interested in, Um, that kind of metric, I guess,
Speaker 1: but when it comes I mean to an extent, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: But you know, in many office employees situations, it's a
Speaker 1: very different scenario. It's it's almost like you should be
Speaker 1: more focused on the results of whatever those hours are
Speaker 1: spent doing. What are the results of those hours, rather
Speaker 1: than here's all the stuff that's occurring during those hours. Right.
Speaker 1: It changes based on the nature of the task, the
Speaker 1: nature of the work. So for example, if you are
Speaker 1: working in a call center, then the phone becomes a
Speaker 1: very robust way of monitoring how this person made X,
Speaker 1: took X calls or processed why claims in Z space
Speaker 1: of time they spent you know, X amount of time
Speaker 1: on a bathroom break or something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: and even down breaking it down into it by minute increments,
Speaker 1: whereas which is pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: It's like necessary, you know, because maybe somebody just doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be on the phone for a minute and
Speaker 1: they're out of break time, so they just go and
Speaker 1: sit in the bathroom. That happens. People at call centers
Speaker 1: have done that, um, just to get away. But it
Speaker 1: is kind of weird, right because like over time, does
Speaker 1: that mean that your employer has has modeled out your
Speaker 1: bowel movements? Yeah, like three fifteen, we're gonna lose Norman
Speaker 1: or Henrietta for about five minutes. Man Shavid has taken
Speaker 1: a long time to make his sandwich today, All right,
Speaker 1: Well we'll see what happens when he gets back. And
Speaker 1: there are generally two ways boss wear is deployed. Well industry, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really important. There could be an app that
Speaker 1: is visible to you or maybe even controllable by the
Speaker 1: worker something where like Okay, I am officially starting my day,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to log into some program and then
Speaker 1: I'm going to log out of that program and the
Speaker 1: stuff I've done is documented, that's transparent. That's just a
Speaker 1: way of keeping people you know, accountable, and it could
Speaker 1: be a win win for everyone because that kind of
Speaker 1: thing also in theory, helps employees establish their boundaries. Right,
Speaker 1: I have logged out. I am no longer Paul Mission
Speaker 1: Control decade. I am Paul the case of thea king,
Speaker 1: uh that that kind of stuff. But the other way
Speaker 1: is not near as as um above board. The other
Speaker 1: way is a secret background process that you cannot see
Speaker 1: unless you know what you're looking for. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people were so overworked these days, frankly, don't consider
Speaker 1: it a good use of time to go digging into that,
Speaker 1: you know, And and the companies that sell this stuff,
Speaker 1: they don't have a strong opinion about which approach organizations
Speaker 1: should take. They will say, hey, well install it either way.
Speaker 1: You want them to know what's up, that's fine. You
Speaker 1: want to you want a secret, you like secrets, will
Speaker 1: do a secret will do a secret one? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just creepy to imagine that it could be happening
Speaker 1: without your knowledge. There are several videos you can find
Speaker 1: on YouTube where there's like a zoom session essentially of
Speaker 1: someone pitching their employee monitoring software and they go into
Speaker 1: a spiel where they they discussed this thing exactly how
Speaker 1: to install it covertly if you wish to, so it
Speaker 1: just goes out to all your employees machines on the
Speaker 1: network at once. Um yikes. And then it gets a
Speaker 1: little complicated depends on if you're like logged into your
Speaker 1: company's VPN or something like that, or how you could
Speaker 1: actually get access in that way. But it is something
Speaker 1: that can happen, and it is designed. Many of these
Speaker 1: softwares are designed to be installed that way. Uh Ben.
Speaker 1: I wanted to take one second, just as we're going
Speaker 1: through all this stuff and just name off a couple
Speaker 1: of these pieces of software so people can be aware.
Speaker 1: I jumped over to PC mag the old PC magazine
Speaker 1: that I used to get in the mail. Really miss
Speaker 1: it and miss it? That's okay, um there, This is
Speaker 1: their best employee monitoring software for two. You can find
Speaker 1: this online right now. One is called Tara Mind. Tara Mind.
Speaker 1: I heard a lot about this one, and in the
Speaker 1: research for this there's also active track heard about that
Speaker 1: one one called I've been I'm gonna say very atto cerebral.
Speaker 1: So it looks like it looks like riato cerebral um
Speaker 1: Controlo's hub staff that sounds more like like an actual
Speaker 1: staffing saying, um like it sounds like a service that
Speaker 1: rents out husbands for people. That's the old hub staff.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Uh, there's also inter Guard. You can learn
Speaker 1: a lot about Interguard. That one has been featured I
Speaker 1: think by the BBC and CBS and a couple other
Speaker 1: couple other outlets staff cop. I don't like that one. Nope, nope. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also vera clock sounds like a timekeeping one, desk,
Speaker 1: time Pro and work Pulse without the new LS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just that. That's just a few because there are
Speaker 1: there are so many. There are too many really for
Speaker 1: us to name in today's show. But the f did
Speaker 1: some great work digging into these. Again, yes they are
Speaker 1: biased source, but we want to acknowledge that they found
Speaker 1: some commonalities across these many, many companies and services. First
Speaker 1: thing first, every piece of software, every product they looked at,
Speaker 1: had the ability to take those regular, frequent screenshots of
Speaker 1: a company device. Ben is up at three am reading
Speaker 1: you know about the history of her Hermetic Magic. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: says you know, whatever whatever I have saw on department
Speaker 1: is watching my computer at the time. He better do
Speaker 1: an episode about this, because otherwise this guy is just
Speaker 1: being a midnight wizard. It's PM Eastern and Matt has
Speaker 1: recorded another piano riff and he's attempting to edit it
Speaker 1: on his work machine. Crap, I love this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh. Let's see it's uh. At the same time,
Speaker 1: this is saar On sees At for some reason, then
Speaker 1: has twenty three tabs open on the history of the
Speaker 1: refugee crisis in Bhutan, and now he's going to wiki
Speaker 1: travel and now he's looking up a recipe for casseroles.
Speaker 1: So the screen scots are one thing, they can see
Speaker 1: what's actively happening on your machine, but it's still contained
Speaker 1: within your machine, right. The other thing many of them
Speaker 1: can do, not all of them. Many of them can
Speaker 1: provide real time video links to your the device, So
Speaker 1: can you can actually monitor the employee themselves rather than
Speaker 1: just what the employee is in putting into the computer.
Speaker 1: You can see that you can see that person's face
Speaker 1: as they read an email, right or as they listen
Speaker 1: to a zoom call with the belief that they have
Speaker 1: turned their camera off. This also I'm getting a little
Speaker 1: sci fi here, but this is also really interesting to
Speaker 1: me because if it was coupled with the right kind
Speaker 1: of algorithm, with the right kind of AI, you could
Speaker 1: conceivably measure people's micro expressions, the little little emotional ticks
Speaker 1: that folks can't often control, and then you would get
Speaker 1: great insight into what those employees were actually thinking. Legally,
Speaker 1: that is something you can do, but it feels really
Speaker 1: ethically fraught, doesn't it. I mean, let's let's see. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say this, you're, for some reason, checking on
Speaker 1: checking on Matt as he learns about vitamin D and
Speaker 1: its effects with a macron for his newest song that
Speaker 1: he's writing. And sure, yeah, sure, and uh and so
Speaker 1: uh the soone, the I T or whatever monitoring apartment says, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. I like that. I like that riff.
Speaker 1: He's really he's really spreading his wings musically. I wonder
Speaker 1: what it looks like right now when he's playing this,
Speaker 1: and they could turn on the feed and maybe they see,
Speaker 1: you know, they see you diligently editing the song you
Speaker 1: have created, but then they say sorry, But then they say,
Speaker 1: I'm suspicious of this new kind of like app or
Speaker 1: this program that he downloaded for this music editing mission.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna take control of
Speaker 1: his desktop, remotely access it, and I'm gonna learn more
Speaker 1: about this program, and I might delete it if I
Speaker 1: want to, and I don't have to. I don't have
Speaker 1: to say that I did it. I'm just gonna do it.
Speaker 1: So the problem here is that these these pieces of
Speaker 1: software don't really distinguish between your work related stuff and
Speaker 1: your personal stuff. So if you have an office job
Speaker 1: and you have a compute, or you've probably used it
Speaker 1: for some personal thing, a small digital errand that's very,
Speaker 1: very common almost everywhere, except for the kind of offices
Speaker 1: you need a security clearance to work in. So imagine this.
Speaker 1: This is what I was thinking of. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have experienced this. You're working on something
Speaker 1: and then it hits you. You You go, oh, it's the
Speaker 1: twenty nine I need to pay that utility bill. I
Speaker 1: don't want to be late on it. Or oh I
Speaker 1: should check my bank account just to make sure you
Speaker 1: know a charge went through or something. The vast majority
Speaker 1: of people are not going to think twice about just
Speaker 1: knocking out that little task. They're gonna open another tab
Speaker 1: and whatever their browser is, they're gonna go to the
Speaker 1: website they need, they're going to enter their password, their
Speaker 1: use their name, and they're gonna pay up. And the
Speaker 1: monitary service sucks that up as well. So your employer
Speaker 1: might not you know, I know that you're making pasta
Speaker 1: for dinner or something, but they can definitely know your
Speaker 1: bank information, your personal log It's for everything, for social
Speaker 1: media as well. That can spell trouble if a hack occurs,
Speaker 1: if corruption occurs, and it can also is the scary part.
Speaker 1: It could conceivably be used to pressure employees. Man, I
Speaker 1: I check my bank account today on my work machine.
Speaker 1: Uh well, let's pause for a second so we can
Speaker 1: all go change our passwords and then we'll return to
Speaker 1: explore the future of the workplace surveillance conspiracy. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is this is the thing I wanted to bring
Speaker 1: up with you, Matt, and I'm really interested to see
Speaker 1: what our fellow listeners think about this. So what if
Speaker 1: an employer finds something and finds evidence of something that
Speaker 1: is against company policy, not like not necessarily um a crime,
Speaker 1: maybe just some like they were they were sloppy with
Speaker 1: confidential information, or they did some kind of violation of policy,
Speaker 1: like they're not allowed to be on personal uh personal
Speaker 1: sites or something like that during work hours, but they were.
Speaker 1: What if the employer doesn't, you know, immediately flag that
Speaker 1: and ask them to discontinue that behavior. What if they
Speaker 1: save that as AMMO as leverage for the future, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like that that is possible? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so, I'm trying to imagine this. I think
Speaker 1: there are only a few scenarios where that could occur.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of a discussion we had with a
Speaker 1: certain person that came on our show that I won't
Speaker 1: name of like saving Ammo for like contract disputes, you know, um,
Speaker 1: for the future. But I don't know. I can't imagine.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine they're not being some pr nightmare for
Speaker 1: a company that like saves compromise on their employees, right right, Well,
Speaker 1: think about it. Maybe, I agree would be a rarefied field,
Speaker 1: But think about it. Maybe in the world of politics
Speaker 1: that that's where that information could be useful and actionable.
Speaker 1: When we're looking at the future workplace surveillance. That is
Speaker 1: an extreme example. I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: the majority of companies are not scheming to like blackmail
Speaker 1: and extort their employees, not necessarily because it's an ethical quantry,
Speaker 1: more so because it's like why it's not worth the effort.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a Rube Goldberg esque approach to
Speaker 1: getting people to do stuff you want. You could just
Speaker 1: ask them, you do pay them to work? Yeah, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the thing. A lot of this feels like, so,
Speaker 1: I don't know, covert coercion to get your employees to
Speaker 1: do what you want them to do, rather than just
Speaker 1: being an active you know, an active boss without monitoring,
Speaker 1: an active manager, without micromanaging. There's a you know, you
Speaker 1: can do it. I I don't know if I don't
Speaker 1: want to see it. I don't know. We run teams
Speaker 1: here and and I don't know if we're good at
Speaker 1: it or not. I I guess we have to get
Speaker 1: feedback from our people. But it feels like you can
Speaker 1: be hands on without being a micro manager and without
Speaker 1: employing the most massive, intrusive micromanagement available, which is this
Speaker 1: boss ware. Yeah, and the concerns are pretty self evident here.
Speaker 1: Your job is conspiring, but they're not necessarily conspiring against you.
Speaker 1: They're conspiring to make sure that you're focused. And most people,
Speaker 1: if we're being honest are not about to risk their
Speaker 1: livelihoods rocking the boat for privacy. You know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: if you are not somehow being monitored yet, your odds
Speaker 1: to be monitored in the future are incredibly high. And
Speaker 1: that is because of is explosion of people working remotely
Speaker 1: or working from home. Back in in fact, found this
Speaker 1: survey by an off it called Gardner, and their survey
Speaker 1: showed that of organizations across the planet are already using
Speaker 1: some form of employee movement data, seventeen percent again across
Speaker 1: the planet, we're already monitoring computer usage information and sixteen
Speaker 1: percent we're monitoring activity on Microsoft Outlook or generic calendar usage.
Speaker 1: That was pre pandemic. The numbers have skyrocketed since and
Speaker 1: it's pretty difficult to find accurate numbers right now, just
Speaker 1: because it all happened so quickly. Your employer can legally
Speaker 1: monitor almost anything you do at work. They're like the
Speaker 1: laws are written such that they they can't follow you
Speaker 1: in the bathroom basically, but they know when you're going,
Speaker 1: they know Norman, they know what you're doing, and really
Speaker 1: it makes sense they can do this as long as
Speaker 1: the reason for their monitoring. The rationale is important enough
Speaker 1: to them. This is this goes into like reading mail.
Speaker 1: You get snail mail that goes to a business. Uh,
Speaker 1: for instance, our job. Our job has never like gone
Speaker 1: through packages sent to us. But that's that's not because
Speaker 1: they can't. It's because most of the people who work
Speaker 1: with really cool and then also there frankly, they're probably
Speaker 1: too busy. Yeah, we definitely Uh, I don't think anyone's
Speaker 1: gone through that. I did notice one time we had
Speaker 1: a letter, and actual snail mail letter that looked as
Speaker 1: though it had been opened and then reclosed, you know,
Speaker 1: using Steam. What that's flattering. It's a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I cared enough. Wow, and they were just checking for anthrax.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, this this thing is real. It's
Speaker 1: very real. I'd like to just quickly mentioned Ben. Right
Speaker 1: before we started rolling, I texted our boss and asked
Speaker 1: that person if there's any employee monitoring software installed in
Speaker 1: our computers or if they use any kind of productivity analytics,
Speaker 1: and this person said they were unaware of such software.
Speaker 1: I was unable to locate anything physically running on my machine,
Speaker 1: and that makes me feel pretty good about our situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're fortunate, especially when you consider how closely other people
Speaker 1: are monitored to a degree it becomes tyrannical. You know,
Speaker 1: uh this, of course, it's not necessarily sinister. Of course,
Speaker 1: not all companies are the same. There are almost certainly
Speaker 1: bad faith actors out there, right. It is completely possible,
Speaker 1: I would even say plausible, that there's you know, a
Speaker 1: creepy individual who might be using this to spy on
Speaker 1: someone inappropriately. But that doesn't mean that the entire company
Speaker 1: is doing right. But the problem there is that there
Speaker 1: is no uniform process to address like data breaches, for instance,
Speaker 1: and there's not really a lot of leeway on the
Speaker 1: employees side to draw clear work home boundaries. The legislation
Speaker 1: just isn't there yet. And until that stuff catches up,
Speaker 1: it is seriously, I know it sounds a little stereotypical
Speaker 1: to say this, It is seriously best to assume that
Speaker 1: you are being observed whenever you are around work equipment.
Speaker 1: Just just just know it, embrace it. And it's a
Speaker 1: weird scenario mm hmm, yeah, but also it's it's strange.
Speaker 1: One thing that really stuck out to me about a
Speaker 1: lot of this criticism is that state level actors can
Speaker 1: do a lot of the same stuff you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. This is what we're seeing is a strategy
Speaker 1: and a technique across the public private sphere. Don't do anything.
Speaker 1: You're a camera if you don't want your boss, possibly
Speaker 1: our n ESA in turn steve to see it. And
Speaker 1: be careful with your personal devices to Like Matt, you
Speaker 1: made the excellent point earlier. He said, Hey, maybe you
Speaker 1: can listen at work, but don't listen on your on
Speaker 1: your work device. Here's the thing, though, There's a question
Speaker 1: I have for you. If say, for instance, you have
Speaker 1: your own personal smartphone and you have installed work apps
Speaker 1: on there of some sort, like a productivity thing or
Speaker 1: an email app of some kind, how much access does
Speaker 1: that give your employer to the other stuff on your
Speaker 1: personal device. That's interesting Theoretically with something like Microsoft, they've
Speaker 1: got Viva insights and monitoring that occurs with us, that
Speaker 1: that happens to us, ben our Microsoft Outlook and our
Speaker 1: calendar and all the other massive Microsoft three sweet can
Speaker 1: be monitored if it's on your device. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they can look at everything else that you
Speaker 1: do on your phone. At least to my knowledge from
Speaker 1: my understanding of reading several articles here, all kind of
Speaker 1: associated with stuff life life hackers, security gladiators, Gizmoto. I
Speaker 1: looked at a bunch of that stuff just to see
Speaker 1: what can happen. But that does mean that certain activity
Speaker 1: on your personal device is monitored, um in some way,
Speaker 1: whether it's just by Microsoft and with Viva, it's just
Speaker 1: giving you insights on your activity, and it's not sharing
Speaker 1: that necessarily with your boss. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: it can access your microphone or camera, and in that
Speaker 1: in that case, you would have to give that system
Speaker 1: like you'd have to give Microsoft teams access to your
Speaker 1: camera and microphone. Oh shoot, which we all do right, yeah,
Speaker 1: well said. And this is where we stand on the
Speaker 1: precipice right of all the surveillance to come, it's important
Speaker 1: to know that it's not just your employer doing it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, obviously every country that can afford
Speaker 1: spies is gonna hire spies because they work your job.
Speaker 1: Isn't out to get you, quote unquote, but they do
Speaker 1: want to have as much visibility as possible, and they've
Speaker 1: kind of I think the pendulum swung. And what's happened
Speaker 1: is that because so many people are working from home,
Speaker 1: and because so many leaders in a given company or
Speaker 1: organization want to be able to show that they produce results.
Speaker 1: They're clamping down and they're they're trying to learn as
Speaker 1: much about what their employees are doing as possible. That
Speaker 1: itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is
Speaker 1: that the line between your expectations, your completely reasonable expectations
Speaker 1: of privacy, and the desires of an employer, that line
Speaker 1: is really fuzzy, and it's align that's easy to step on.
Speaker 1: It's a line that's easy to cross, and it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to pull things back once you've gone over that threshold.
Speaker 1: So be safe out there, folks. Can't wait to hear
Speaker 1: your war stories about odd surveillance monitoring. I can't. You know,
Speaker 1: these are kind of episodes that UH sometimes lead like
Speaker 1: I t experts to write to us with tips and tricks,
Speaker 1: and I love that. So shout out to our pal
Speaker 1: James if you're listening that. Uh. I always enjoyed those conversations.
Speaker 1: But yeah, give us tips and tricks that we can
Speaker 1: share with your fellow listeners about how to how to
Speaker 1: maintain that boundary as best as you can to be safe,
Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, no matter what you're doing or what's
Speaker 1: what you think might be monitoring. Just remember that Cortana
Speaker 1: and Alexa and your Google Home and your phone can
Speaker 1: always hear you because it's always listening for you to
Speaker 1: wake it up, so it doesn't really matter. That's very inspiring, yep,
Speaker 1: very inspiring. Mr Frederick uh We we want to hear
Speaker 1: from you. What do you think the future of workplace
Speaker 1: surveillance is? Let us know. We try to be easy
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