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Smile, Big Brother's watching

CRAIG SILVERMAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 3:07 PM EDT 07/04/08

It's worse than standing over your shoulder. New technology, from GPS to biometrics, allows employers to track your every move ...Read the full article

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  1. Tuff Gnarl from sherwood park, writes: Another tool that can be used for spying is the lowly cell phone. Most now have a GPS option that can track your whereabouts - never mind the cell phone bill listing all the numbers you've called. The GPS option can be turned off though.

    Watch out for that company credit card too. It can indicate where you've been, where you've eaten, etc.
  2. andy c from Canada writes: i wonder how many people know that GPS was initially developed by the U.S military?
  3. Gordon Murray from Canada writes: No sooner do you put your cellphone in your suit vest pocket and incline to relax/think than someone walking past your semi-baffled/under-baffled desk kicks your chair, claiming GPS slouch monitor enforcement is just around the corner and repurcussion delay would cut into team efficiency measurements.
  4. Dick Dupa from Toronto, Canada writes: I do not have or use mobile phone, no need for this piece of trash in my pocket. Now, I know from my friend who works IT in the bank- his manager sleeps most of the day in his cubicle. So where is this monitoring. He should have been fired long time ago.
  5. andy c from Canada writes: i know with google maps for cell phones with no GPS they can't pinpoint exactly where you are but can triangulate your position within a few hundred meters depending on where the cell towers are located. i thought i was interesting and kinda scary at the same time (i have a smart phone with wifi but no gps)
  6. Boo Stailey from Toronto, Canada writes: We are quite far past big brother; it is a tired analogy.

    Rather than focusing on the devices (cameras, GPS units, e-mail, air miles and points programs, and so forth), perhaps we would do better to ask ourselves about the connections that are occurring behind those collections. What inferences can be made about us--correctly or incorrectly--once the information has already been collected?

    Where, we might ask, is our identity located? If we see identity as a place (as in, a     domain) rather than an attribute, we are in a much better position to think critically about those who collect information from us--and in a much better position, also, to analyse the devices that collect information from us. Because in that sense those who collect, collect not only our information, but a little bit of us as well.
  7. crime of the century from This is not America, Canada writes: Most be a wonderful life working for the corporation, just think of all the benefits, Lord black knows.

    Laptop

    The new surveillance control centre. Keylogger software can record everything you type. Company e-mails are archived, and your browsing history is also easily put on file. Technology is awesome.

    BlackBerry

    You know how it's like a little laptop? See above. Plus, the company gets the bill, which means your calls are listed. So refrain from calling that old university friend in Singapore.
  8. CD W from Canada writes: I think since the 1st gulf war everyone knows that the military had something to do with gps. Anyways, in most new hospitals in Ontario, they use the key card system to open doors and other secure areas. In one hospital, they found a pattern of a particular male employee trying to gain entry to a women's lockeroom. I think they got rid of the creeper.
  9. tom harris from Canada writes: Self employed, one man show, no employees. Gotta cell phone but I already know where I am. Make more money than an office worker. Office is outside. Fresh air, sunshine, rain, snow, dark. Make more money than an office worker. My back yard is several thousands of square miles. Retire at 50-55. Could get greedy and go to 60. Naaa!

    Big Brother can kiss my asterisk.
  10. Dick Dupa from Toronto, Canada writes: Tracking "..your every move.." requires extra manpower..and will cost employer. This article is a load of bunkum.
  11. Don Quixote from the frozen Banana Belt, Ont., Canada writes: How many more things to control an already manipulated society?
  12. Carl White from Canada writes: True freedom comes only with financial independence. Until then, watch what you say and do at all times.
  13. J S from Toronto, Canada writes: I hate being watched. The best boss is one that trusts me and treats me like an adult. Let my results speak for themselves.
  14. Free Spirit from Halifax, Canada writes: Tom has got the right idea. It's getting to the point where it isn't worth working for a corporation anymore. Office bullies, gossip, abusive managers, mandatory unpaid overtime, big brother, greedy shareholders sucking your blood. Why waste your life being a corporate drone ? Self employment will be the wave of the future...
  15. tom harris from Canada writes: Free Spirit from Halifax

    Oh! Oh! Honey! Bake some cookies! looks like we might be getting some neighbors.
  16. Richard Sharp from Ottawa, Canada writes: As citizens, employees and consumers, we are being watched, identified, searched, sniffed, profiled and reported like never before. And increasingly mistaken and otherwise "convicted," rejected or solicited based on information we can't see from sources we're not told.

    The "I've got nothing to hide" bunch are the most delusional. They don't understand basic notions of individual freedom and dignity. Without the right to privacy, we become Orwellian drones.

    Our police and security agencies and their technology pimps have played on our false fears of crime and terror fats creating a global surveillance society. Like our deteriorating environment, it'll be a lot worse for our children and theirs. Unless we fight back, now.
  17. Able Bodied Man from Colony of Van Isle, Canada writes: ".. Microsoft had filed for a patent on a "unique monitoring system" that would use a computer to capture the blood pressure, heart rate, facial expressions, body temperature and respiration rate of a worker. Microsoft wrote that the system could "automatically detect frustration or stress in the user" and then "offer and provide assistance."
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    How much of the stress is caused by Microsoft?
  18. Able Bodied Man from Colony of Van Isle, Canada writes:
    Trust no one.
  19. doctor business from vancouver, Canada writes: Breakdown of trust is a breakdown of humanity. Our security culture is asinine. When people use machines they often forget that trust and security are real human relationship values. You don't get security from a barcode passkey. You get clever kids and some criminals photocopying barcodes and bypassing the system. You get most people inconvenienced and a lot of people made afraid. What this does is seperate people into classes. Keyloggers are not new or scary and if you have a decent OS (like linux) not so easy to sneak into place. But that requires the luxury of education. So much of the short sighted systems we are making now to have such absolute power are going to break. Think of the Y2K fantasy scenarios except happening all the time randomly. Basically we are getting stupider as a species and it is because people can no longer see beyond their own noses. The phrase "trust no one" is heard as something cool and tough to say rather than a disability. Humans are more interdependant than anything else. That is what seperates us from the animals: not being seperated! All this mistrust and paranoia is a waste of time. I suppose it is all to keep us busy as we have more people than we need to do the work we need - so instead we choose meaningless busiwork instead of fulfilling our own needs. Like the price of food that is skyrocketing because we have invented useless cars to take all the time and oil. Ignorance is contagious.
  20. Tinfoil Hatt from Eye in the Sky, Canada writes: Tom Harris,

    Tom Harris is not your real name.

    You are a real estate agent.

    You Live in White Rock, BC.

    You have time to drink coffee at Starbuck's on weekday mornings because most of your business takes place on weekends.

    Some of this information is false--that is intentional.

    Big Brother already knows the taste of your asterisk and therefore has no need to kiss it. You may want to spend some time worrying about which of Big Brother's informants provided this information.

    You do not yet wear a tinfoil hat, but you are starting to think you may need one.
  21. Tinfoil Hatt from Eye in the Sky, Canada writes:
    Tom Harris,

    Jes messin witcha.
    Everyone over here at the Ministry of Information knows that you're a truck driver from Prince George. Didn't think we cared, did you?

    ;-)
  22. Don Quixote from the frozen Banana Belt, Ont., Canada writes: doctor business from vancouver: You're quit right there.

    Also a new crook is 'borne' every day, the thiefs, robbers and muggers of old have now shifted to the internet, the electronically read credit and other cards.

    We won't trust a crook if we face him/her or see them in action, but we trust the electronic gadgetery which is just another way of tickling the last information, the last penny from people.

    Electronic convienence has become an addiction, it separates people from personal interaction more than ever, thus makes a lot of them a willing prey for corrupt manipulators at any level.
  23. charles crouch from Canada writes: You came pretty close to it Free Spirit from Halifax. This is nothing new. This has been going on before the coming of the new technology. Long before PCs and cellphones and GPSs, corporations were keeping close track of what you were doing in the work environment and elsewhere. The would employ a fellow co-worker who would keep them apprised of whatever they wanted to know. I once told one such individual "If at first you don't succeed, join a Lodge". The look on his face that told me I had hit the nail on the head I shall never forget. I never before realised a professed churchgoer could possibly harbour and display such venom.
  24. Newmarket NDPer from Taipei, Taiwan writes: In addition to Keylogger, take great care if you spot
    Sympatico pcANYWHERE which offers to let you remotely log on,
    but when your boss, data center or CSIS installs it, that means
    others could be turning on your PC and reading/storing/altering/and sending text, even as you write it.
  25. GlynnMhor of Skywall from Canada writes: Richard Sharp from Ottawa, Canada writes: "Without the right to privacy, we become Orwellian drones."

    What employees do on company property, on company-paid time, or with the company's equipment can hardly be considered the realm of 'privacy'.

    This article is about workplace surveillance, not privacy.
  26. Newmarket NDPer from Taipei, Taiwan writes: But where do you draw the line between surveillance and privacy? Should bosses have the right to biometrically measure every pulse, eyeball direction and breath? Hey, they're paying you to produce, not to watch you in the washroom?
    I've heard that in Germany it's illegal to remotely monitoring the PCs of office staff. Ottawa should certainly rethink updating legislation to protect the masses in this new post-1984 world.
  27. Chazz Michaels from United States Outlying writes: what a waste of money,

    why don't they just measure productivity instead of caring if someone is using the net or having smoke breaks, if the employee is doing his or her job and is producing, let them do what they want, its obviously working...

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