January 7, 2022 • 53 mins
Of course your bosses keep tabs on you -- it's an old idea, and not, in itself, a sinister thing. Yet critics allege the rise of continually connected technology, combined with a pandemic forcing millions to work from their homes, triggered a dangerous explosion in the scope of workplace surveillance. Tune in to learn how much your employer can potentially know about you -- and why they may know you're listening to this show, right now.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on an adventure,
but will return shortly. They call me Ben. We're joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controled decades.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
It's a new year. Hope everybody was able to get
(00:47):
some kind of vacations, some kind of holiday slash family time,
and a lot of us listening now are officially returned
to work. A holiday season has uh sadly concluded, and
so as we speak, there are billions of people across
the planet who are firing up the old laptop, or
(01:08):
they're you know, putting on the uniform. They're they're starting
the company van, and they're off on another another episode
of trying to stay alive in may fortune what they
say in the Hunger Games and fortunate favorite the Bold,
Maybe odds be ever in your favor. Matt, you remember
(01:30):
that song. I always feel like someone's watching me. Somebody
was watching me. Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that
a lot as we were researching today's episode. This is
Orwellian and you know what, fellow conspiracy realist, after thinking
about it and after digging into this, I can't speak
(01:50):
for Matt or Mission control, but I do hope you're
listening to this episode at work, yes, just hopefully not
on your company issued device. Don't don't do that, right right? Uh?
If you? The reason this is a cool thing to
listen to while you're at work is because it gives
it a little extra punch, a little extra immediacy, right,
(02:12):
you know, Uh, Matt. People have heard this joke on
the show before about how stuff they don't want you
to know has ruined our search histories, and that is
that is true. But the hazard of an oddball search
history pales in comparison to what many other people have
experienced in the workplace. Especially over the past couple of years,
(02:33):
life turned upside down across the planet. Millions and millions
of people found themselves let's see, battling disease, financial woes,
mental health, social unrest, all the while still trying to
hold down a solid job for a lot of people.
The world will never be the same. And this this
goes for employers as well as employee ease. Our episode
(02:58):
today is about work, it's about watching, It's about ultimately
who watches the Watchman. So yeah, yeah, and this I
don't know about you, man, but this, this one spooked
me out a little too. Oh, definitely, especially because of
the way work has changed for many of us, especially
the people right now making this show. Uh, we work
(03:22):
from home now and for to a large extent, and
we probably will for oh, I don't know the foreseeable future,
because because of the safety benefits of being all isolated
in separate places. And we're we're gonna get into it.
So let's just talk about statistics while we're sitting here
and discussing this stuff, right, Yeah, here are the facts.
(03:44):
If you go to the U. S. Bureau of Labor
and Statistics, you'll see that across about one in four
employed people teleworked or worked from home for pay in
some capacity. That doesn't mean they were all locked up
hermiting away. That means there were a lot of people
who were like, I'll go in one day a week,
(04:06):
or I will be gone for you know, my office
is closed for a month and we're working remotely. So
all at all, more than a third of all the
households in the US reported working from home more frequently
than they had before COVID hit. But we also found
some socio economic sociodemographic divides. If you are a younger worker,
(04:32):
you're less likely to have teleworked due to the pandemic.
And that's where you know, we learned things like essential workers.
A lot of younger people who were maybe just getting
their first job out of high school, during high school
something like that, they started off in places like retail
operations or the service industry, and they had to go
(04:56):
into work in person because of the nature of their profession. Yeah,
and that's something that also comes into play with these statistics.
The Census Bureau found that that economic divide that we're
all seeing accelerate came into play here as well. People
who made more money tended to more easily telework than
those who made less money. So if you look at
(05:17):
the Census Bureau, they found that in the highest earning
households with incomes of two hundred thousand dollars or more,
that's combined household seventy three point one. Seventy three point one,
we're able to switch to telework. Again, like we're able
to switch to telework. And in contrast to that, only
twelve point seven percent of households earning under twenty five
(05:40):
thousand dollars a year where we're able to telework at
all because they again, like you said, then they had
to go into work for one reason or another. Yeah, exactly. No.
Let's do a thought experiment, folks. Imagine that you are
a manager. Imagine you're a CEO or what have you.
You have a team of people, and you have a
group of task If you have your own boss to
(06:02):
report to, you need to be able to tell that
person that you've knocked out these tasks or you've made
progress on them. And of course, if you are a
good manager, your goal is to make sure your employees
grow professionally. You want to set them up for success.
But now your whole team, your whole posse, has turned
their homes into isolated work cubicles. You can't walk by
(06:26):
like that office space guy with a cup of coffee anymore.
You have to find some other way to keep track
of what they're doing. Could you do a weekly zoom meeting. Sure,
why not? But is that enough? That's when managers and
employers started asking themselves what else can we do? And
this leads us to the new age of work surveillance.
(06:51):
And you know, I just think about this too. Um folks,
If you remember the last time you got a new job,
you probably had a bunch of paperwork. I know that.
You know, when our overlords have changed over the years,
we have to go through the rigamarole of reading all
the paperwork again. You know, codes of ethics, financial info,
(07:14):
insurance stuff, all the all the really juicy reads. But
in this mountain of paperwork, there's some interesting things. You
will often find tucked away somewhere in there a statement
saying something like, any activity you do on company time
with company equipment needs to be work related. Uh, and
you don't have maybe intellectual property rights, which sounds abstract,
(07:36):
but it's really important. This applies to the idea of
patents and inventions. Like let's say mission control. While we're recording,
he's secretly using his work machine to invent a new
kind of case. Ada. That's what. Yeah, then our bosses,
let's say this case to do blows up. It's like
(07:56):
transformed the world's understanding of sandwiches. But our bosses, say,
came up with this while you were at work using
our equipment, So this case idea belongs to us, pal.
The problem is how do you improve that it occurred
on that computer? And when yes, yes, and that's I mean,
(08:20):
obviously that's an extreme example. It's not unprecedented. Most people,
most companies aren't going to go to court over case ideas.
Though for the record, I would watch a show called
case Adia Court. I think the idea has got legs.
But you're absolutely right, Matt, Like you're you're if you're
listening to this, your job, in some way, shape or form,
(08:43):
is monitoring you. Like, that's as old as the idea
of clocking in and clocking out on a punch card.
The issue is, especially nowadays, the process may be much
more robust, much more conspiratorial, and much less visible, and
you might think, and it's only going to accelerate in
the future. Before we move on, I have to ask you, Matt.
(09:06):
I want to put you on the spot. But do
you remember please? Oh good, all right, we'll put us
both on the spot. Do you remember a few months
ago we were talking about how to get under kind
of under the hood of your laptop and see what
other entities were contacting your machine. Well, yes, Ben, one
of the things you can do if you have a Mac,
(09:28):
you can check your activity monitor. That's a fun way
to find out if there's software running in the background
that you're unaware of that's maybe been installed without your knowledge,
because you can do that with boss wear. If you're
running a Windows machine, you check your task Manager and
do the same thing. We can talk about it and
get into a little later. But if you somehow block
the monitoring that your employers have installed on your computer, um,
(09:51):
that's probably going to cause more problems than just if
you don't know work around it in some other way. Uh,
but yeah, we've we found out you could do that.
There's also certain things like antivirus software that might be
on your machine that's either installed by you or your employer,
and that's a good way to monitor when things connect
(10:13):
to your computer, right if something physically has been plugged
in of some device, or if something virtually connects to
your machine. And a lot of these things aren't necessarily nefarious,
it's it's important to establish that from the get go
because it turns out a lot of them are very
much nefarious, insidious, dangerous. Here's where it gets crazy. So
(10:39):
companies struggled during the pandemic to maintain control and visibility
with an increasingly remote workforce. You used at our word
of the day just a second ago, Matt bossware. This
is just like malware software hardware. Bossware is described vibes
(11:00):
types of software genre software, as well as an industry
that is built entirely upon monitoring employees, monitoring productivity, even
gamifying as Microsoft and Amazon have have done. And if
you're if you're a data nerd, there's a lot of
cool stuff you can do. You can compare things, you
(11:22):
can build tables, you can look at, uh, the metadata
of people's time and how they spend it. So if
you you know, if one of your employees is a
night owl, like someone who is regularly burning the midnight oil,
then you will know. You will see, oh, these emails
are being sent out at eight am, but they're being
(11:44):
scheduled at like midnight. You know that that gives you
a sense of what your crew is doing. And boss
wear is usually going to be on a computer, a smartphone,
maybe a tablet. The important thing about it is it
has admin privileges. It can access all the info that
(12:04):
happens on that device. Yeah, it more or less can
collect anything and everything that happens. Right, And theoretically, these systems,
the software, and these enterprise clients, they're all about a
TPS BEEN that's attendance, time, productivity and security. Yes, yeah,
(12:26):
that's that's what it is, a t p S. This
stuff already existed in some form or another. As we said,
you know, regardless of where you work, if you have
a quote unquote office job, then you probably have some
kind of I T department or some kind of subcontracted
I T service, and they will, for instance, probably get
(12:49):
alerts if someone accesses a not Safer work website on
company equipment. And I think everybody can agree that's pretty reasonable, right,
I'm with come on that. That's it's a small battle
you've had to fight a few times over the years
just because this show is not safe for work. Again, like,
(13:10):
I hope you're not listening on your work device, but
I hope you are listening at work. Yes, yes, so
so yeah, this this is something that we have run
into in the course of stuff. They don't want you
to know with you know, not not too much sort
of sound and fury from the suits, but we have
(13:32):
you know, we we've had to like this has happened
to Jonathan Strickland on tech stuff too. This happened to
a lot of our colleagues because you have to dive
into primary sources, and some of those primary sources are
in some pretty dicey places online. Uh. And that's just
the nature of our pursuit, which is somewhat distinct and
(13:52):
different from a lot of other jobs. But the same
rules still apply. If you have an I T department
that gets these alert they're probably not obsessively like going
employee by employee and reading everyone's browser history. The process
has probably automated and it gets flagged, sort of the
way that state level surveillance of citizens works. Uh. And
(14:17):
that is changing in the remote set up right, it
was it was much more of a flagging system before
employees were far far away from the manager's physical position.
M hm. And this goes more extreme. Here's one that
you may have on your on your workplace gadgets that
(14:40):
you don't know about. It's something called a key logger, Matt.
Key loggers are scary partially because of how effective they are,
but I said, I think also because of how invisible
they can be and how just how much information they
can give out, there's a lot potential for shenanigans. Oh yeah, yeah.
(15:04):
I imagine that someone can monitor every single key stroke
that you make. That means every website you've ever visited,
if you type it in, every password you've ever entered,
if you type it in, uh, any message that you
send to anyone with a maybe a messages app or
with a text messaging service, or even WhatsApp or anything
(15:26):
like that. Uh, it can get monitored. And it's way scarier.
I think if this is being monitored by somebody that
you just don't know, if it's you know, your employer,
maybe your direct boss or their boss, that's could stink.
But it's not the same as if it's you know,
being tracked by some other third party that you're unaware
(15:46):
of exactly. Your email can also be searched. Calls made
from company issued devices can be not just recorded, but
monitoring in real time. So there's definitely the potential for
someone to be eavesdropping, which again is something that a
lot of people have just sort of accepted as normal.
(16:07):
Like I I don't know about you. Well, I do
know about you. We both, for a very long time
have taken it for granted that if a camera is
not physically covered up, you should treat it as though
it is recording, sort of like a gun should always
be treated as though it is loaded. Dude, do you
remember when we were we went around the office and
in all the studios we started, Well, I I don't know.
(16:29):
I think you did it too, but I know I
personally applied tape to many of the studio imax and
and other machines that just have cameras installed on them,
just as a like, if you need it, you can
take the tape off. Yeah, and you were I important
in your defense. In our defense, we weren't doing like
(16:49):
sketchy stuff. We weren't even you know, It's not like
it wasn't like, oh, no, one, we're secretly selling quayludes
or something like that. We weren't even you know, in
our noses. Well, I wasn't. No, we weren't doing anything
to ferries. It's just the fact that it's what you said.
It's a it's like a loaded gun that's pointed at
all times, not really obviously and you know, I'm not
(17:12):
trying to downplay guns or up play cameras. It's just
something we should be aware of exactly. And there are
numerous other examples of this monitoring, like some software. We'll
just take frequent, periodic screenshots of whatever is on your monitor.
And at this point let's pause for word from our sponsors.
(17:34):
See who at our job is spying on us, and
then we'll return to dive into the deeper waters surrounding
workplace surveillance. Okay, we're back. Like we said, this is
kind of normalized now. This idea of being monitored at
(17:56):
work is something that the majority of employees were guardless
of their specific industries, have come to accept. Some employers, yes,
are much more extreme than others. Our Offit is pretty
las fair so far as we know, which is another
thing we have to bring up in today's episode. But
there are really really extreme examples, and one that you
(18:18):
will run into time and time again is Amazon. Oh
my gosh, Amazon, so many methods to track your employers
in so many different positions. And let's just use one
quick example here. Imagine that you drive for a living.
This is what you do. You're You're an Amazon delivery
(18:41):
person and inside the vehicle with you at all times.
At all times is a three sixty degree camera that
can see anything and everything that you do, every action,
and it's constantly monitoring and judging you. Did you yawn
a little bit? Oh bro? Why did you do that?
(19:02):
Don't do that? Did you take a hand off the
wheel for a second? You didn't just touch your cell phone?
Did you like there? It really does monitor everything, and
it monitors what how much time you spend behind the wheel,
how much time you're away from that driver's seat to
deliver packages at a certain location. It's intense stuff, and
that's why you know it's I would say it's a
(19:24):
direct reason why you you may have heard these stories.
We've heard many about drivers having to urinate in the
car in order to keep their productivity rating up and
to prevent them from getting in trouble with their little
three sixty spy that lives with them. And transporting packages
is an incredibly difficult job. Whether it's the postal service,
(19:48):
whether it's FedEx, whether it's Amazon, people are pretty hard
on delivery drivers and it's important to remember that a
lot of times drivers are being forced to go go
through certain optimized routes they are, you know, they have
a route dictated to them, and they can in some
cases be penalized if they say, well, it doesn't make
(20:10):
sense for me to go this way, so I'm gonna
go this other way, you know traffic, or I have
another drop that's just down the street, let me knock
that out. Well, you know, Ben, it makes a lot
more sense why there's been a massive uptick in videos
of delivery drivers like maybe tossing a package a little
bit to keep down the amount of time they're spending
in one place. That's it's crazy to think about. And
(20:32):
you know, it certainly doesn't excuse destroying the contents of
a package by throwing it or something. But you could
totally see why what happened. Yeah, absolutely can. And the
companies that are selling this tracking software, they're making it killing.
Don't worry about them. They're they're doing fine, we assure you.
But there's a lot of criticism coming out, and many
(20:53):
critics are increasingly concerned about what happens when your office
becomes your home and your company's little version of Big
Brother becomes in a very real way, like a nosy
roommate that's hovering over your shoulder. Like, for instance, Matt,
you are you are recording in your house, in your office.
(21:15):
I'm recording in a room in my place that I
just converted into an office. You know, this is just
a room that I converted into an office as well. Yes, yes, yes,
we just we're working in conversion rooms, I guess. But
our personal lives also occur in these rooms, you know.
(21:35):
And the question then becomes a question about thresholds, boundaries,
and comfort levels. How much should your employer be able
to know about your personal life? Uh? Found a great
quote by an outfit called the Electronic Frontier Foundation the
e f F. We've talked about them on the show before,
(21:56):
and I like how they put this. They put it
pretty succinctly when they talk about when when they introduce
the concept of bosswear, and when they talk about how
these tools are sold to employers and how they can
affect employees. And they say, some vendors build their tools
(22:18):
as automatic time tracking or workplace analytics software. Others market
to companies concerned about data breaches or intellectual property theft.
We'll call these tools collectively bosswear. Hey, here's the term there.
It is the e f F is using it. So
I think we were totally fine and using bosswear. Yeah,
(22:38):
let's continue with the quote. While aimed at helping employers,
boss ware puts workers privacy and security at risk by
logging every click and key stroke, covertly gathering information for lawsuits,
and using other spying features that go far beyond what
is necessary and proportionate to manage a workforce. Yeah, so
(22:59):
their their idea is that this is overkilled basically, That's
that's kind of the crux of their argument. And yeah,
it's clear that the e f F has a horse
in this race. They have an opinion, they have a
badger in the bag because again, they're a nonprofit that
is intensely focused on worrying about privacy and the digital sphere.
That is their job, right, So it's not hard to
(23:20):
see why they have all people would think this is
a bad thing. Remotely controlling a laptop camera in an office,
that's one thing. But then imagine you have a camera
that turns on without your consent in your own bedroom,
like after work hours. You know, now it's like nine thirty,
(23:41):
you're kicking it, you know, on the bed, uh, next
to your desk or something. I don't know, you're watching
always sunning in Philadelphia, or you're you're knitting because that's
your new hobby during the pandemic for some reason. In
this scenario, and all of a sudden, you notice that
little little red light on your camera whatever your devices
(24:03):
has popped on and you don't know how long it's
been on, and you don't know why it's on. You
can go and shut it off yourself or cover it,
but now you know someone else can drive your car
as it were. Add to this the even more black
mirrorsque part of this. I believe there's functionality in some
devices to have the camera on without seeming as though
(24:25):
it is on. But just in in many of these
software's defense, it is only used on company time, right,
So if there's a certain number of work hours you're
supposed to keep in a week, and those work hours
are between a certain time, then generally it could or
would be active and then would be inactive, and other
(24:46):
times that isn't always the case. And you know, there's
so many variables that go into that. This is a
real scenario that could happen. Yeah, yeah, And at this
point there might be some folks in the audience who
some of us are thinking, well, well, this is kind
of are we being a sensationalistic or guys, calm down,
it's the Internet. Privacy doesn't exist anymore. But before we
(25:09):
ask if this is alarmist, let's look at some of
those general categories of monitoring. What we have just talked
about is the most common type of surveillance activity monitoring.
It's a log of which apps you use, which websites
you visit. It could include stuff like who you email
and when, including the subject line metadata. It could also
(25:33):
include posts you make on social media on your work computer, tablet,
or phones. Let's say you just got hot news story
or an announcement and you go to Twitter or you
go to Facebook and you just pop it up there
while you're thinking about it. Then your employer will know
about that as well. And this is one of the
(25:54):
most widely accepted things. Just assume people know what you're
doing on the work computer, but the boss where that records,
you know, physical input on your mouth or your keyboard,
You might be surprised by by the process that occurs there.
This takes a look at a minute by minute breakdown,
(26:14):
you know what I mean, Like, what are Ben and
Matt typing what are Matt and Ben reading and when
are they reading it? And then that is used as
kind of a stand in for productivity, and anybody has
worked in the field of research before, you know that
there's a lot of stuff you might be doing that
looks inactive because you're just you're reading a book, right,
(26:37):
or you're deep in a weird government PDF. And that's
the one pager on for like three hours. Yeah, no,
you're right, And it's a weird thing to bring into
our world. Been because for me, and let's say the
last the forty five minutes to the run up of recording,
I stopped reading and I started jumping in YouTube to
(26:58):
see how this has been reported on by other outfits, right,
And so I'm literally sitting here at my computer with
my cameras covered of course, and my microphone turned off,
but I'm watching YouTube videos and I'm just trying to
take in as much information as i can to see
how other people have covered it. And if this, you know,
(27:18):
if this system or one of these systems was watching
me and monitoring me, it would look like I'm literally
just watching YouTube videos, um, which is what I was doing.
But it was part of my job. So It's just
a strange thing. You know, if you're if your job
is based on you know, a quantitative number of tasks,
(27:39):
like in you know, the let's say the Amazon drivers circumstance,
this specific thing monitoring your computer isn't gonna help. But
a you know, watching how many tasks are done in
a certain amount of time is like, in a weird,
messed up, dystopian way, something that an employer should kind
of be interested in, Um, that kind of metric, I guess,
(28:02):
but when it comes I mean to an extent, right, yeah,
But you know, in many office employees situations, it's a
very different scenario. It's it's almost like you should be
more focused on the results of whatever those hours are
spent doing. What are the results of those hours, rather
(28:24):
than here's all the stuff that's occurring during those hours. Right.
It changes based on the nature of the task, the
nature of the work. So for example, if you are
working in a call center, then the phone becomes a
very robust way of monitoring how this person made X,
(28:46):
took X calls or processed why claims in Z space
of time they spent you know, X amount of time
on a bathroom break or something like that, you know,
and even down breaking it down into it by minute increments,
whereas which is pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
(29:07):
It's like necessary, you know, because maybe somebody just doesn't
want to be on the phone for a minute and
they're out of break time, so they just go and
sit in the bathroom. That happens. People at call centers
have done that, um, just to get away. But it
is kind of weird, right because like over time, does
(29:29):
that mean that your employer has has modeled out your
bowel movements? Yeah, like three fifteen, we're gonna lose Norman
or Henrietta for about five minutes. Man Shavid has taken
a long time to make his sandwich today, All right,
(29:51):
Well we'll see what happens when he gets back. And
there are generally two ways boss wear is deployed. Well industry, Yeah,
this is really important. There could be an app that
is visible to you or maybe even controllable by the
worker something where like Okay, I am officially starting my day,
(30:12):
so I'm going to log into some program and then
I'm going to log out of that program and the
stuff I've done is documented, that's transparent. That's just a
way of keeping people you know, accountable, and it could
be a win win for everyone because that kind of
thing also in theory, helps employees establish their boundaries. Right,
(30:35):
I have logged out. I am no longer Paul Mission
Control decade. I am Paul the case of thea king,
uh that that kind of stuff. But the other way
is not near as as um above board. The other
way is a secret background process that you cannot see
(30:58):
unless you know what you're looking for. And a lot
of people were so overworked these days, frankly, don't consider
it a good use of time to go digging into that,
you know, And and the companies that sell this stuff,
they don't have a strong opinion about which approach organizations
should take. They will say, hey, well install it either way.
(31:19):
You want them to know what's up, that's fine. You
want to you want a secret, you like secrets, will
do a secret will do a secret one? Yeah, I mean,
it's just creepy to imagine that it could be happening
without your knowledge. There are several videos you can find
on YouTube where there's like a zoom session essentially of
(31:40):
someone pitching their employee monitoring software and they go into
a spiel where they they discussed this thing exactly how
to install it covertly if you wish to, so it
just goes out to all your employees machines on the
network at once. Um yikes. And then it gets a
little complicated depends on if you're like logged into your
(32:02):
company's VPN or something like that, or how you could
actually get access in that way. But it is something
that can happen, and it is designed. Many of these
softwares are designed to be installed that way. Uh Ben.
I wanted to take one second, just as we're going
through all this stuff and just name off a couple
of these pieces of software so people can be aware.
(32:24):
I jumped over to PC mag the old PC magazine
that I used to get in the mail. Really miss
it and miss it? That's okay, um there, This is
their best employee monitoring software for two. You can find
this online right now. One is called Tara Mind. Tara Mind.
(32:45):
I heard a lot about this one, and in the
research for this there's also active track heard about that
one one called I've been I'm gonna say very atto cerebral.
So it looks like it looks like riato cerebral um
Controlo's hub staff that sounds more like like an actual
(33:08):
staffing saying, um like it sounds like a service that
rents out husbands for people. That's the old hub staff.
Oh man. Uh, there's also inter Guard. You can learn
a lot about Interguard. That one has been featured I
think by the BBC and CBS and a couple other
(33:29):
couple other outlets staff cop. I don't like that one. Nope, nope. Uh.
There's also vera clock sounds like a timekeeping one, desk,
time Pro and work Pulse without the new LS. Yeah,
(33:50):
that's just that. That's just a few because there are
there are so many. There are too many really for
us to name in today's show. But the f did
some great work digging into these. Again, yes they are
biased source, but we want to acknowledge that they found
some commonalities across these many, many companies and services. First
(34:14):
thing first, every piece of software, every product they looked at,
had the ability to take those regular, frequent screenshots of
a company device. Ben is up at three am reading
you know about the history of her Hermetic Magic. Okay, okay,
says you know, whatever whatever I have saw on department
(34:37):
is watching my computer at the time. He better do
an episode about this, because otherwise this guy is just
being a midnight wizard. It's PM Eastern and Matt has
recorded another piano riff and he's attempting to edit it
on his work machine. Crap, I love this. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh. Let's see it's uh. At the same time,
(35:01):
this is saar On sees At for some reason, then
has twenty three tabs open on the history of the
refugee crisis in Bhutan, and now he's going to wiki
travel and now he's looking up a recipe for casseroles.
(35:23):
So the screen scots are one thing, they can see
what's actively happening on your machine, but it's still contained
within your machine, right. The other thing many of them
can do, not all of them. Many of them can
provide real time video links to your the device, So
can you can actually monitor the employee themselves rather than
(35:46):
just what the employee is in putting into the computer.
You can see that you can see that person's face
as they read an email, right or as they listen
to a zoom call with the belief that they have
turned their camera off. This also I'm getting a little
sci fi here, but this is also really interesting to
(36:07):
me because if it was coupled with the right kind
of algorithm, with the right kind of AI, you could
conceivably measure people's micro expressions, the little little emotional ticks
that folks can't often control, and then you would get
great insight into what those employees were actually thinking. Legally,
(36:29):
that is something you can do, but it feels really
ethically fraught, doesn't it. I mean, let's let's see. Okay,
so let's say this, you're, for some reason, checking on
checking on Matt as he learns about vitamin D and
its effects with a macron for his newest song that
he's writing. And sure, yeah, sure, and uh and so
(36:52):
uh the soone, the I T or whatever monitoring apartment says, Oh,
this is interesting. I like that. I like that riff.
He's really he's really spreading his wings musically. I wonder
what it looks like right now when he's playing this,
and they could turn on the feed and maybe they see,
you know, they see you diligently editing the song you
(37:12):
have created, but then they say sorry, But then they say,
I'm suspicious of this new kind of like app or
this program that he downloaded for this music editing mission.
So I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna take control of
(37:35):
his desktop, remotely access it, and I'm gonna learn more
about this program, and I might delete it if I
want to, and I don't have to. I don't have
to say that I did it. I'm just gonna do it.
So the problem here is that these these pieces of
software don't really distinguish between your work related stuff and
your personal stuff. So if you have an office job
(37:59):
and you have a compute, or you've probably used it
for some personal thing, a small digital errand that's very,
very common almost everywhere, except for the kind of offices
you need a security clearance to work in. So imagine this.
This is what I was thinking of. I think a
lot of people have experienced this. You're working on something
and then it hits you. You You go, oh, it's the
(38:20):
twenty nine I need to pay that utility bill. I
don't want to be late on it. Or oh I
should check my bank account just to make sure you
know a charge went through or something. The vast majority
of people are not going to think twice about just
knocking out that little task. They're gonna open another tab
and whatever their browser is, they're gonna go to the
website they need, they're going to enter their password, their
(38:41):
use their name, and they're gonna pay up. And the
monitary service sucks that up as well. So your employer
might not you know, I know that you're making pasta
for dinner or something, but they can definitely know your
bank information, your personal log It's for everything, for social
media as well. That can spell trouble if a hack occurs,
(39:02):
if corruption occurs, and it can also is the scary part.
It could conceivably be used to pressure employees. Man, I
I check my bank account today on my work machine.
Uh well, let's pause for a second so we can
(39:26):
all go change our passwords and then we'll return to
explore the future of the workplace surveillance conspiracy. Okay, so
this is this is the thing I wanted to bring
up with you, Matt, and I'm really interested to see
what our fellow listeners think about this. So what if
(39:51):
an employer finds something and finds evidence of something that
is against company policy, not like not necessarily um a crime,
maybe just some like they were they were sloppy with
confidential information, or they did some kind of violation of policy,
like they're not allowed to be on personal uh personal
(40:16):
sites or something like that during work hours, but they were.
What if the employer doesn't, you know, immediately flag that
and ask them to discontinue that behavior. What if they
save that as AMMO as leverage for the future, you
know what I mean? Like that that is possible? Yeah,
I guess so, I'm trying to imagine this. I think
(40:36):
there are only a few scenarios where that could occur.
It reminds me of a discussion we had with a
certain person that came on our show that I won't
name of like saving Ammo for like contract disputes, you know, um,
for the future. But I don't know. I can't imagine.
I can't imagine they're not being some pr nightmare for
(40:59):
a company that like saves compromise on their employees, right right, Well,
think about it. Maybe, I agree would be a rarefied field,
But think about it. Maybe in the world of politics
that that's where that information could be useful and actionable.
When we're looking at the future workplace surveillance. That is
(41:21):
an extreme example. I think it's safe to say that
the majority of companies are not scheming to like blackmail
and extort their employees, not necessarily because it's an ethical quantry,
more so because it's like why it's not worth the effort.
It's kind of like a Rube Goldberg esque approach to
getting people to do stuff you want. You could just
(41:43):
ask them, you do pay them to work? Yeah, you know, Yeah,
that's the thing. A lot of this feels like, so,
I don't know, covert coercion to get your employees to
do what you want them to do, rather than just
being an active you know, an active boss without monitoring,
an active manager, without micromanaging. There's a you know, you
(42:08):
can do it. I I don't know if I don't
want to see it. I don't know. We run teams
here and and I don't know if we're good at
it or not. I I guess we have to get
feedback from our people. But it feels like you can
be hands on without being a micro manager and without
employing the most massive, intrusive micromanagement available, which is this
(42:30):
boss ware. Yeah, and the concerns are pretty self evident here.
Your job is conspiring, but they're not necessarily conspiring against you.
They're conspiring to make sure that you're focused. And most people,
if we're being honest are not about to risk their
livelihoods rocking the boat for privacy. You know what I mean. Like,
if you are not somehow being monitored yet, your odds
(42:54):
to be monitored in the future are incredibly high. And
that is because of is explosion of people working remotely
or working from home. Back in in fact, found this
survey by an off it called Gardner, and their survey
showed that of organizations across the planet are already using
(43:18):
some form of employee movement data, seventeen percent again across
the planet, we're already monitoring computer usage information and sixteen
percent we're monitoring activity on Microsoft Outlook or generic calendar usage.
That was pre pandemic. The numbers have skyrocketed since and
(43:40):
it's pretty difficult to find accurate numbers right now, just
because it all happened so quickly. Your employer can legally
monitor almost anything you do at work. They're like the
laws are written such that they they can't follow you
in the bathroom basically, but they know when you're going,
(44:02):
they know Norman, they know what you're doing, and really
it makes sense they can do this as long as
the reason for their monitoring. The rationale is important enough
to them. This is this goes into like reading mail.
You get snail mail that goes to a business. Uh,
for instance, our job. Our job has never like gone
(44:25):
through packages sent to us. But that's that's not because
they can't. It's because most of the people who work
with really cool and then also there frankly, they're probably
too busy. Yeah, we definitely Uh, I don't think anyone's
gone through that. I did notice one time we had
a letter, and actual snail mail letter that looked as
(44:47):
though it had been opened and then reclosed, you know,
using Steam. What that's flattering. It's a long time ago.
I cared enough. Wow, and they were just checking for anthrax.
I think, so, yeah, this this thing is real. It's
very real. I'd like to just quickly mentioned Ben. Right
(45:09):
before we started rolling, I texted our boss and asked
that person if there's any employee monitoring software installed in
our computers or if they use any kind of productivity analytics,
and this person said they were unaware of such software.
(45:30):
I was unable to locate anything physically running on my machine,
and that makes me feel pretty good about our situation. Yeah,
we're fortunate, especially when you consider how closely other people
are monitored to a degree it becomes tyrannical. You know,
uh this, of course, it's not necessarily sinister. Of course,
(45:53):
not all companies are the same. There are almost certainly
bad faith actors out there, right. It is completely possible,
I would even say plausible, that there's you know, a
creepy individual who might be using this to spy on
someone inappropriately. But that doesn't mean that the entire company
is doing right. But the problem there is that there
(46:16):
is no uniform process to address like data breaches, for instance,
and there's not really a lot of leeway on the
employees side to draw clear work home boundaries. The legislation
just isn't there yet. And until that stuff catches up,
it is seriously, I know it sounds a little stereotypical
(46:36):
to say this, It is seriously best to assume that
you are being observed whenever you are around work equipment.
Just just just know it, embrace it. And it's a
weird scenario mm hmm, yeah, but also it's it's strange.
One thing that really stuck out to me about a
(46:58):
lot of this criticism is that state level actors can
do a lot of the same stuff you know what
I mean. This is what we're seeing is a strategy
and a technique across the public private sphere. Don't do anything.
You're a camera if you don't want your boss, possibly
our n ESA in turn steve to see it. And
(47:20):
be careful with your personal devices to Like Matt, you
made the excellent point earlier. He said, Hey, maybe you
can listen at work, but don't listen on your on
your work device. Here's the thing, though, There's a question
I have for you. If say, for instance, you have
your own personal smartphone and you have installed work apps
(47:41):
on there of some sort, like a productivity thing or
an email app of some kind, how much access does
that give your employer to the other stuff on your
personal device. That's interesting Theoretically with something like Microsoft, they've
got Viva insights and monitoring that occurs with us, that
(48:04):
that happens to us, ben our Microsoft Outlook and our
calendar and all the other massive Microsoft three sweet can
be monitored if it's on your device. But that doesn't
mean that they can look at everything else that you
do on your phone. At least to my knowledge from
my understanding of reading several articles here, all kind of
(48:27):
associated with stuff life life hackers, security gladiators, Gizmoto. I
looked at a bunch of that stuff just to see
what can happen. But that does mean that certain activity
on your personal device is monitored, um in some way,
whether it's just by Microsoft and with Viva, it's just
(48:49):
giving you insights on your activity, and it's not sharing
that necessarily with your boss. But I don't know if
it can access your microphone or camera, and in that
in that case, you would have to give that system
like you'd have to give Microsoft teams access to your
camera and microphone. Oh shoot, which we all do right, yeah,
(49:14):
well said. And this is where we stand on the
precipice right of all the surveillance to come, it's important
to know that it's not just your employer doing it.
It's kind of like, obviously every country that can afford
spies is gonna hire spies because they work your job.
(49:34):
Isn't out to get you, quote unquote, but they do
want to have as much visibility as possible, and they've
kind of I think the pendulum swung. And what's happened
is that because so many people are working from home,
and because so many leaders in a given company or
organization want to be able to show that they produce results.
(49:55):
They're clamping down and they're they're trying to learn as
much about what their employees are doing as possible. That
itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is
that the line between your expectations, your completely reasonable expectations
of privacy, and the desires of an employer, that line
(50:18):
is really fuzzy, and it's align that's easy to step on.
It's a line that's easy to cross, and it's very
difficult to pull things back once you've gone over that threshold.
So be safe out there, folks. Can't wait to hear
your war stories about odd surveillance monitoring. I can't. You know,
these are kind of episodes that UH sometimes lead like
(50:42):
I t experts to write to us with tips and tricks,
and I love that. So shout out to our pal
James if you're listening that. Uh. I always enjoyed those conversations.
But yeah, give us tips and tricks that we can
share with your fellow listeners about how to how to
maintain that boundary as best as you can to be safe,
you know, Yeah, no matter what you're doing or what's
(51:05):
what you think might be monitoring. Just remember that Cortana
and Alexa and your Google Home and your phone can
always hear you because it's always listening for you to
wake it up, so it doesn't really matter. That's very inspiring, yep,
very inspiring. Mr Frederick uh We we want to hear
(51:28):
from you. What do you think the future of workplace
surveillance is? Let us know. We try to be easy
to find online. You can find us on Facebook and
Twitter and YouTube at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram. We are
a Conspiracy Stuff show. If you don't want to use
social media, you can instead use your phone and your
mouth to contact us via voice. Our number is one
(51:51):
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you'll have three minutes. Those three minutes are yours. Go nuts,
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us know if we can use your name and door
voice on the air, and most importantly, when you call
one three three st d w y t K, I'd
(52:11):
just like to say it um when you call. Don't
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on websites to start digging into, and you will have
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where we are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(52:53):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on an adventure,
but will return shortly. They call me Ben. We're joined
as always with our super producer Paul Mission controled decades.
Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that
makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
It's a new year. Hope everybody was able to get
(00:47):
some kind of vacations, some kind of holiday slash family time,
and a lot of us listening now are officially returned
to work. A holiday season has uh sadly concluded, and
so as we speak, there are billions of people across
the planet who are firing up the old laptop, or
(01:08):
they're you know, putting on the uniform. They're they're starting
the company van, and they're off on another another episode
of trying to stay alive in may fortune what they
say in the Hunger Games and fortunate favorite the Bold,
Maybe odds be ever in your favor. Matt, you remember
(01:30):
that song. I always feel like someone's watching me. Somebody
was watching me. Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that
a lot as we were researching today's episode. This is
Orwellian and you know what, fellow conspiracy realist, after thinking
about it and after digging into this, I can't speak
(01:50):
for Matt or Mission control, but I do hope you're
listening to this episode at work, yes, just hopefully not
on your company issued device. Don't don't do that, right right? Uh?
If you? The reason this is a cool thing to
listen to while you're at work is because it gives
it a little extra punch, a little extra immediacy, right,
(02:12):
you know, Uh, Matt. People have heard this joke on
the show before about how stuff they don't want you
to know has ruined our search histories, and that is
that is true. But the hazard of an oddball search
history pales in comparison to what many other people have
experienced in the workplace. Especially over the past couple of years,
(02:33):
life turned upside down across the planet. Millions and millions
of people found themselves let's see, battling disease, financial woes,
mental health, social unrest, all the while still trying to
hold down a solid job for a lot of people.
The world will never be the same. And this this
goes for employers as well as employee ease. Our episode
(02:58):
today is about work, it's about watching, It's about ultimately
who watches the Watchman. So yeah, yeah, and this I
don't know about you, man, but this, this one spooked
me out a little too. Oh, definitely, especially because of
the way work has changed for many of us, especially
the people right now making this show. Uh, we work
(03:22):
from home now and for to a large extent, and
we probably will for oh, I don't know the foreseeable future,
because because of the safety benefits of being all isolated
in separate places. And we're we're gonna get into it.
So let's just talk about statistics while we're sitting here
and discussing this stuff, right, Yeah, here are the facts.
(03:44):
If you go to the U. S. Bureau of Labor
and Statistics, you'll see that across about one in four
employed people teleworked or worked from home for pay in
some capacity. That doesn't mean they were all locked up
hermiting away. That means there were a lot of people
who were like, I'll go in one day a week,
(04:06):
or I will be gone for you know, my office
is closed for a month and we're working remotely. So
all at all, more than a third of all the
households in the US reported working from home more frequently
than they had before COVID hit. But we also found
some socio economic sociodemographic divides. If you are a younger worker,
(04:32):
you're less likely to have teleworked due to the pandemic.
And that's where you know, we learned things like essential workers.
A lot of younger people who were maybe just getting
their first job out of high school, during high school
something like that, they started off in places like retail
operations or the service industry, and they had to go
(04:56):
into work in person because of the nature of their profession. Yeah,
and that's something that also comes into play with these statistics.
The Census Bureau found that that economic divide that we're
all seeing accelerate came into play here as well. People
who made more money tended to more easily telework than
those who made less money. So if you look at
(05:17):
the Census Bureau, they found that in the highest earning
households with incomes of two hundred thousand dollars or more,
that's combined household seventy three point one. Seventy three point one,
we're able to switch to telework. Again, like we're able
to switch to telework. And in contrast to that, only
twelve point seven percent of households earning under twenty five
(05:40):
thousand dollars a year where we're able to telework at
all because they again, like you said, then they had
to go into work for one reason or another. Yeah, exactly. No.
Let's do a thought experiment, folks. Imagine that you are
a manager. Imagine you're a CEO or what have you.
You have a team of people, and you have a
group of task If you have your own boss to
(06:02):
report to, you need to be able to tell that
person that you've knocked out these tasks or you've made
progress on them. And of course, if you are a
good manager, your goal is to make sure your employees
grow professionally. You want to set them up for success.
But now your whole team, your whole posse, has turned
their homes into isolated work cubicles. You can't walk by
(06:26):
like that office space guy with a cup of coffee anymore.
You have to find some other way to keep track
of what they're doing. Could you do a weekly zoom meeting. Sure,
why not? But is that enough? That's when managers and
employers started asking themselves what else can we do? And
this leads us to the new age of work surveillance.
(06:51):
And you know, I just think about this too. Um folks,
If you remember the last time you got a new job,
you probably had a bunch of paperwork. I know that.
You know, when our overlords have changed over the years,
we have to go through the rigamarole of reading all
the paperwork again. You know, codes of ethics, financial info,
(07:14):
insurance stuff, all the all the really juicy reads. But
in this mountain of paperwork, there's some interesting things. You
will often find tucked away somewhere in there a statement
saying something like, any activity you do on company time
with company equipment needs to be work related. Uh, and
you don't have maybe intellectual property rights, which sounds abstract,
(07:36):
but it's really important. This applies to the idea of
patents and inventions. Like let's say mission control. While we're recording,
he's secretly using his work machine to invent a new
kind of case. Ada. That's what. Yeah, then our bosses,
let's say this case to do blows up. It's like
(07:56):
transformed the world's understanding of sandwiches. But our bosses, say,
came up with this while you were at work using
our equipment, So this case idea belongs to us, pal.
The problem is how do you improve that it occurred
on that computer? And when yes, yes, and that's I mean,
(08:20):
obviously that's an extreme example. It's not unprecedented. Most people,
most companies aren't going to go to court over case ideas.
Though for the record, I would watch a show called
case Adia Court. I think the idea has got legs.
But you're absolutely right, Matt, Like you're you're if you're
listening to this, your job, in some way, shape or form,
(08:43):
is monitoring you. Like, that's as old as the idea
of clocking in and clocking out on a punch card.
The issue is, especially nowadays, the process may be much
more robust, much more conspiratorial, and much less visible, and
you might think, and it's only going to accelerate in
the future. Before we move on, I have to ask you, Matt.
(09:06):
I want to put you on the spot. But do
you remember please? Oh good, all right, we'll put us
both on the spot. Do you remember a few months
ago we were talking about how to get under kind
of under the hood of your laptop and see what
other entities were contacting your machine. Well, yes, Ben, one
of the things you can do if you have a Mac,
(09:28):
you can check your activity monitor. That's a fun way
to find out if there's software running in the background
that you're unaware of that's maybe been installed without your knowledge,
because you can do that with boss wear. If you're
running a Windows machine, you check your task Manager and
do the same thing. We can talk about it and
get into a little later. But if you somehow block
the monitoring that your employers have installed on your computer, um,
(09:51):
that's probably going to cause more problems than just if
you don't know work around it in some other way. Uh,
but yeah, we've we found out you could do that.
There's also certain things like antivirus software that might be
on your machine that's either installed by you or your employer,
and that's a good way to monitor when things connect
(10:13):
to your computer, right if something physically has been plugged
in of some device, or if something virtually connects to
your machine. And a lot of these things aren't necessarily nefarious,
it's it's important to establish that from the get go
because it turns out a lot of them are very
much nefarious, insidious, dangerous. Here's where it gets crazy. So
(10:39):
companies struggled during the pandemic to maintain control and visibility
with an increasingly remote workforce. You used at our word
of the day just a second ago, Matt bossware. This
is just like malware software hardware. Bossware is described vibes
(11:00):
types of software genre software, as well as an industry
that is built entirely upon monitoring employees, monitoring productivity, even
gamifying as Microsoft and Amazon have have done. And if
you're if you're a data nerd, there's a lot of
cool stuff you can do. You can compare things, you
(11:22):
can build tables, you can look at, uh, the metadata
of people's time and how they spend it. So if
you you know, if one of your employees is a
night owl, like someone who is regularly burning the midnight oil,
then you will know. You will see, oh, these emails
are being sent out at eight am, but they're being
(11:44):
scheduled at like midnight. You know that that gives you
a sense of what your crew is doing. And boss
wear is usually going to be on a computer, a smartphone,
maybe a tablet. The important thing about it is it
has admin privileges. It can access all the info that
(12:04):
happens on that device. Yeah, it more or less can
collect anything and everything that happens. Right, And theoretically, these systems,
the software, and these enterprise clients, they're all about a
TPS BEEN that's attendance, time, productivity and security. Yes, yeah,
(12:26):
that's that's what it is, a t p S. This
stuff already existed in some form or another. As we said,
you know, regardless of where you work, if you have
a quote unquote office job, then you probably have some
kind of I T department or some kind of subcontracted
I T service, and they will, for instance, probably get
(12:49):
alerts if someone accesses a not Safer work website on
company equipment. And I think everybody can agree that's pretty reasonable, right,
I'm with come on that. That's it's a small battle
you've had to fight a few times over the years
just because this show is not safe for work. Again, like,
(13:10):
I hope you're not listening on your work device, but
I hope you are listening at work. Yes, yes, so
so yeah, this this is something that we have run
into in the course of stuff. They don't want you
to know with you know, not not too much sort
of sound and fury from the suits, but we have
(13:32):
you know, we we've had to like this has happened
to Jonathan Strickland on tech stuff too. This happened to
a lot of our colleagues because you have to dive
into primary sources, and some of those primary sources are
in some pretty dicey places online. Uh. And that's just
the nature of our pursuit, which is somewhat distinct and
(13:52):
different from a lot of other jobs. But the same
rules still apply. If you have an I T department
that gets these alert they're probably not obsessively like going
employee by employee and reading everyone's browser history. The process
has probably automated and it gets flagged, sort of the
way that state level surveillance of citizens works. Uh. And
(14:17):
that is changing in the remote set up right, it
was it was much more of a flagging system before
employees were far far away from the manager's physical position.
M hm. And this goes more extreme. Here's one that
you may have on your on your workplace gadgets that
(14:40):
you don't know about. It's something called a key logger, Matt.
Key loggers are scary partially because of how effective they are,
but I said, I think also because of how invisible
they can be and how just how much information they
can give out, there's a lot potential for shenanigans. Oh yeah, yeah.
(15:04):
I imagine that someone can monitor every single key stroke
that you make. That means every website you've ever visited,
if you type it in, every password you've ever entered,
if you type it in, uh, any message that you
send to anyone with a maybe a messages app or
with a text messaging service, or even WhatsApp or anything
(15:26):
like that. Uh, it can get monitored. And it's way scarier.
I think if this is being monitored by somebody that
you just don't know, if it's you know, your employer,
maybe your direct boss or their boss, that's could stink.
But it's not the same as if it's you know,
being tracked by some other third party that you're unaware
(15:46):
of exactly. Your email can also be searched. Calls made
from company issued devices can be not just recorded, but
monitoring in real time. So there's definitely the potential for
someone to be eavesdropping, which again is something that a
lot of people have just sort of accepted as normal.
(16:07):
Like I I don't know about you. Well, I do
know about you. We both, for a very long time
have taken it for granted that if a camera is
not physically covered up, you should treat it as though
it is recording, sort of like a gun should always
be treated as though it is loaded. Dude, do you
remember when we were we went around the office and
in all the studios we started, Well, I I don't know.
(16:29):
I think you did it too, but I know I
personally applied tape to many of the studio imax and
and other machines that just have cameras installed on them,
just as a like, if you need it, you can
take the tape off. Yeah, and you were I important
in your defense. In our defense, we weren't doing like
(16:49):
sketchy stuff. We weren't even you know, It's not like
it wasn't like, oh, no, one, we're secretly selling quayludes
or something like that. We weren't even you know, in
our noses. Well, I wasn't. No, we weren't doing anything
to ferries. It's just the fact that it's what you said.
It's a it's like a loaded gun that's pointed at
all times, not really obviously and you know, I'm not
(17:12):
trying to downplay guns or up play cameras. It's just
something we should be aware of exactly. And there are
numerous other examples of this monitoring, like some software. We'll
just take frequent, periodic screenshots of whatever is on your monitor.
And at this point let's pause for word from our sponsors.
(17:34):
See who at our job is spying on us, and
then we'll return to dive into the deeper waters surrounding
workplace surveillance. Okay, we're back. Like we said, this is
kind of normalized now. This idea of being monitored at
(17:56):
work is something that the majority of employees were guardless
of their specific industries, have come to accept. Some employers, yes,
are much more extreme than others. Our Offit is pretty
las fair so far as we know, which is another
thing we have to bring up in today's episode. But
there are really really extreme examples, and one that you
(18:18):
will run into time and time again is Amazon. Oh
my gosh, Amazon, so many methods to track your employers
in so many different positions. And let's just use one
quick example here. Imagine that you drive for a living.
This is what you do. You're You're an Amazon delivery
(18:41):
person and inside the vehicle with you at all times.
At all times is a three sixty degree camera that
can see anything and everything that you do, every action,
and it's constantly monitoring and judging you. Did you yawn
a little bit? Oh bro? Why did you do that?
(19:02):
Don't do that? Did you take a hand off the
wheel for a second? You didn't just touch your cell phone?
Did you like there? It really does monitor everything, and
it monitors what how much time you spend behind the wheel,
how much time you're away from that driver's seat to
deliver packages at a certain location. It's intense stuff, and
that's why you know it's I would say it's a
(19:24):
direct reason why you you may have heard these stories.
We've heard many about drivers having to urinate in the
car in order to keep their productivity rating up and
to prevent them from getting in trouble with their little
three sixty spy that lives with them. And transporting packages
is an incredibly difficult job. Whether it's the postal service,
(19:48):
whether it's FedEx, whether it's Amazon, people are pretty hard
on delivery drivers and it's important to remember that a
lot of times drivers are being forced to go go
through certain optimized routes they are, you know, they have
a route dictated to them, and they can in some
cases be penalized if they say, well, it doesn't make
(20:10):
sense for me to go this way, so I'm gonna
go this other way, you know traffic, or I have
another drop that's just down the street, let me knock
that out. Well, you know, Ben, it makes a lot
more sense why there's been a massive uptick in videos
of delivery drivers like maybe tossing a package a little
bit to keep down the amount of time they're spending
in one place. That's it's crazy to think about. And
(20:32):
you know, it certainly doesn't excuse destroying the contents of
a package by throwing it or something. But you could
totally see why what happened. Yeah, absolutely can. And the
companies that are selling this tracking software, they're making it killing.
Don't worry about them. They're they're doing fine, we assure you.
But there's a lot of criticism coming out, and many
(20:53):
critics are increasingly concerned about what happens when your office
becomes your home and your company's little version of Big
Brother becomes in a very real way, like a nosy
roommate that's hovering over your shoulder. Like, for instance, Matt,
you are you are recording in your house, in your office.
(21:15):
I'm recording in a room in my place that I
just converted into an office. You know, this is just
a room that I converted into an office as well. Yes, yes, yes,
we just we're working in conversion rooms, I guess. But
our personal lives also occur in these rooms, you know.
(21:35):
And the question then becomes a question about thresholds, boundaries,
and comfort levels. How much should your employer be able
to know about your personal life? Uh? Found a great
quote by an outfit called the Electronic Frontier Foundation the
e f F. We've talked about them on the show before,
(21:56):
and I like how they put this. They put it
pretty succinctly when they talk about when when they introduce
the concept of bosswear, and when they talk about how
these tools are sold to employers and how they can
affect employees. And they say, some vendors build their tools
(22:18):
as automatic time tracking or workplace analytics software. Others market
to companies concerned about data breaches or intellectual property theft.
We'll call these tools collectively bosswear. Hey, here's the term there.
It is the e f F is using it. So
I think we were totally fine and using bosswear. Yeah,
(22:38):
let's continue with the quote. While aimed at helping employers,
boss ware puts workers privacy and security at risk by
logging every click and key stroke, covertly gathering information for lawsuits,
and using other spying features that go far beyond what
is necessary and proportionate to manage a workforce. Yeah, so
(22:59):
their their idea is that this is overkilled basically, That's
that's kind of the crux of their argument. And yeah,
it's clear that the e f F has a horse
in this race. They have an opinion, they have a
badger in the bag because again, they're a nonprofit that
is intensely focused on worrying about privacy and the digital sphere.
That is their job, right, So it's not hard to
(23:20):
see why they have all people would think this is
a bad thing. Remotely controlling a laptop camera in an office,
that's one thing. But then imagine you have a camera
that turns on without your consent in your own bedroom,
like after work hours. You know, now it's like nine thirty,
(23:41):
you're kicking it, you know, on the bed, uh, next
to your desk or something. I don't know, you're watching
always sunning in Philadelphia, or you're you're knitting because that's
your new hobby during the pandemic for some reason. In
this scenario, and all of a sudden, you notice that
little little red light on your camera whatever your devices
(24:03):
has popped on and you don't know how long it's
been on, and you don't know why it's on. You
can go and shut it off yourself or cover it,
but now you know someone else can drive your car
as it were. Add to this the even more black
mirrorsque part of this. I believe there's functionality in some
devices to have the camera on without seeming as though
(24:25):
it is on. But just in in many of these
software's defense, it is only used on company time, right,
So if there's a certain number of work hours you're
supposed to keep in a week, and those work hours
are between a certain time, then generally it could or
would be active and then would be inactive, and other
(24:46):
times that isn't always the case. And you know, there's
so many variables that go into that. This is a
real scenario that could happen. Yeah, yeah, And at this
point there might be some folks in the audience who
some of us are thinking, well, well, this is kind
of are we being a sensationalistic or guys, calm down,
it's the Internet. Privacy doesn't exist anymore. But before we
(25:09):
ask if this is alarmist, let's look at some of
those general categories of monitoring. What we have just talked
about is the most common type of surveillance activity monitoring.
It's a log of which apps you use, which websites
you visit. It could include stuff like who you email
and when, including the subject line metadata. It could also
(25:33):
include posts you make on social media on your work computer, tablet,
or phones. Let's say you just got hot news story
or an announcement and you go to Twitter or you
go to Facebook and you just pop it up there
while you're thinking about it. Then your employer will know
about that as well. And this is one of the
(25:54):
most widely accepted things. Just assume people know what you're
doing on the work computer, but the boss where that records,
you know, physical input on your mouth or your keyboard,
You might be surprised by by the process that occurs there.
This takes a look at a minute by minute breakdown,
(26:14):
you know what I mean, Like, what are Ben and
Matt typing what are Matt and Ben reading and when
are they reading it? And then that is used as
kind of a stand in for productivity, and anybody has
worked in the field of research before, you know that
there's a lot of stuff you might be doing that
looks inactive because you're just you're reading a book, right,
(26:37):
or you're deep in a weird government PDF. And that's
the one pager on for like three hours. Yeah, no,
you're right, And it's a weird thing to bring into
our world. Been because for me, and let's say the
last the forty five minutes to the run up of recording,
I stopped reading and I started jumping in YouTube to
(26:58):
see how this has been reported on by other outfits, right,
And so I'm literally sitting here at my computer with
my cameras covered of course, and my microphone turned off,
but I'm watching YouTube videos and I'm just trying to
take in as much information as i can to see
how other people have covered it. And if this, you know,
(27:18):
if this system or one of these systems was watching
me and monitoring me, it would look like I'm literally
just watching YouTube videos, um, which is what I was doing.
But it was part of my job. So It's just
a strange thing. You know, if you're if your job
is based on you know, a quantitative number of tasks,
(27:39):
like in you know, the let's say the Amazon drivers circumstance,
this specific thing monitoring your computer isn't gonna help. But
a you know, watching how many tasks are done in
a certain amount of time is like, in a weird,
messed up, dystopian way, something that an employer should kind
of be interested in, Um, that kind of metric, I guess,
(28:02):
but when it comes I mean to an extent, right, yeah,
But you know, in many office employees situations, it's a
very different scenario. It's it's almost like you should be
more focused on the results of whatever those hours are
spent doing. What are the results of those hours, rather
(28:24):
than here's all the stuff that's occurring during those hours. Right.
It changes based on the nature of the task, the
nature of the work. So for example, if you are
working in a call center, then the phone becomes a
very robust way of monitoring how this person made X,
(28:46):
took X calls or processed why claims in Z space
of time they spent you know, X amount of time
on a bathroom break or something like that, you know,
and even down breaking it down into it by minute increments,
whereas which is pretty gross. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
(29:07):
It's like necessary, you know, because maybe somebody just doesn't
want to be on the phone for a minute and
they're out of break time, so they just go and
sit in the bathroom. That happens. People at call centers
have done that, um, just to get away. But it
is kind of weird, right because like over time, does
(29:29):
that mean that your employer has has modeled out your
bowel movements? Yeah, like three fifteen, we're gonna lose Norman
or Henrietta for about five minutes. Man Shavid has taken
a long time to make his sandwich today, All right,
(29:51):
Well we'll see what happens when he gets back. And
there are generally two ways boss wear is deployed. Well industry, Yeah,
this is really important. There could be an app that
is visible to you or maybe even controllable by the
worker something where like Okay, I am officially starting my day,
(30:12):
so I'm going to log into some program and then
I'm going to log out of that program and the
stuff I've done is documented, that's transparent. That's just a
way of keeping people you know, accountable, and it could
be a win win for everyone because that kind of
thing also in theory, helps employees establish their boundaries. Right,
(30:35):
I have logged out. I am no longer Paul Mission
Control decade. I am Paul the case of thea king,
uh that that kind of stuff. But the other way
is not near as as um above board. The other
way is a secret background process that you cannot see
(30:58):
unless you know what you're looking for. And a lot
of people were so overworked these days, frankly, don't consider
it a good use of time to go digging into that,
you know, And and the companies that sell this stuff,
they don't have a strong opinion about which approach organizations
should take. They will say, hey, well install it either way.
(31:19):
You want them to know what's up, that's fine. You
want to you want a secret, you like secrets, will
do a secret will do a secret one? Yeah, I mean,
it's just creepy to imagine that it could be happening
without your knowledge. There are several videos you can find
on YouTube where there's like a zoom session essentially of
(31:40):
someone pitching their employee monitoring software and they go into
a spiel where they they discussed this thing exactly how
to install it covertly if you wish to, so it
just goes out to all your employees machines on the
network at once. Um yikes. And then it gets a
little complicated depends on if you're like logged into your
(32:02):
company's VPN or something like that, or how you could
actually get access in that way. But it is something
that can happen, and it is designed. Many of these
softwares are designed to be installed that way. Uh Ben.
I wanted to take one second, just as we're going
through all this stuff and just name off a couple
of these pieces of software so people can be aware.
(32:24):
I jumped over to PC mag the old PC magazine
that I used to get in the mail. Really miss
it and miss it? That's okay, um there, This is
their best employee monitoring software for two. You can find
this online right now. One is called Tara Mind. Tara Mind.
(32:45):
I heard a lot about this one, and in the
research for this there's also active track heard about that
one one called I've been I'm gonna say very atto cerebral.
So it looks like it looks like riato cerebral um
Controlo's hub staff that sounds more like like an actual
(33:08):
staffing saying, um like it sounds like a service that
rents out husbands for people. That's the old hub staff.
Oh man. Uh, there's also inter Guard. You can learn
a lot about Interguard. That one has been featured I
think by the BBC and CBS and a couple other
(33:29):
couple other outlets staff cop. I don't like that one. Nope, nope. Uh.
There's also vera clock sounds like a timekeeping one, desk,
time Pro and work Pulse without the new LS. Yeah,
(33:50):
that's just that. That's just a few because there are
there are so many. There are too many really for
us to name in today's show. But the f did
some great work digging into these. Again, yes they are
biased source, but we want to acknowledge that they found
some commonalities across these many, many companies and services. First
(34:14):
thing first, every piece of software, every product they looked at,
had the ability to take those regular, frequent screenshots of
a company device. Ben is up at three am reading
you know about the history of her Hermetic Magic. Okay, okay,
says you know, whatever whatever I have saw on department
(34:37):
is watching my computer at the time. He better do
an episode about this, because otherwise this guy is just
being a midnight wizard. It's PM Eastern and Matt has
recorded another piano riff and he's attempting to edit it
on his work machine. Crap, I love this. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh. Let's see it's uh. At the same time,
(35:01):
this is saar On sees At for some reason, then
has twenty three tabs open on the history of the
refugee crisis in Bhutan, and now he's going to wiki
travel and now he's looking up a recipe for casseroles.
(35:23):
So the screen scots are one thing, they can see
what's actively happening on your machine, but it's still contained
within your machine, right. The other thing many of them
can do, not all of them. Many of them can
provide real time video links to your the device, So
can you can actually monitor the employee themselves rather than
(35:46):
just what the employee is in putting into the computer.
You can see that you can see that person's face
as they read an email, right or as they listen
to a zoom call with the belief that they have
turned their camera off. This also I'm getting a little
sci fi here, but this is also really interesting to
(36:07):
me because if it was coupled with the right kind
of algorithm, with the right kind of AI, you could
conceivably measure people's micro expressions, the little little emotional ticks
that folks can't often control, and then you would get
great insight into what those employees were actually thinking. Legally,
(36:29):
that is something you can do, but it feels really
ethically fraught, doesn't it. I mean, let's let's see. Okay,
so let's say this, you're, for some reason, checking on
checking on Matt as he learns about vitamin D and
its effects with a macron for his newest song that
he's writing. And sure, yeah, sure, and uh and so
(36:52):
uh the soone, the I T or whatever monitoring apartment says, Oh,
this is interesting. I like that. I like that riff.
He's really he's really spreading his wings musically. I wonder
what it looks like right now when he's playing this,
and they could turn on the feed and maybe they see,
you know, they see you diligently editing the song you
(37:12):
have created, but then they say sorry, But then they say,
I'm suspicious of this new kind of like app or
this program that he downloaded for this music editing mission.
So I'm gonna jump in. I'm gonna take control of
(37:35):
his desktop, remotely access it, and I'm gonna learn more
about this program, and I might delete it if I
want to, and I don't have to. I don't have
to say that I did it. I'm just gonna do it.
So the problem here is that these these pieces of
software don't really distinguish between your work related stuff and
your personal stuff. So if you have an office job
(37:59):
and you have a compute, or you've probably used it
for some personal thing, a small digital errand that's very,
very common almost everywhere, except for the kind of offices
you need a security clearance to work in. So imagine this.
This is what I was thinking of. I think a
lot of people have experienced this. You're working on something
and then it hits you. You You go, oh, it's the
(38:20):
twenty nine I need to pay that utility bill. I
don't want to be late on it. Or oh I
should check my bank account just to make sure you
know a charge went through or something. The vast majority
of people are not going to think twice about just
knocking out that little task. They're gonna open another tab
and whatever their browser is, they're gonna go to the
website they need, they're going to enter their password, their
(38:41):
use their name, and they're gonna pay up. And the
monitary service sucks that up as well. So your employer
might not you know, I know that you're making pasta
for dinner or something, but they can definitely know your
bank information, your personal log It's for everything, for social
media as well. That can spell trouble if a hack occurs,
(39:02):
if corruption occurs, and it can also is the scary part.
It could conceivably be used to pressure employees. Man, I
I check my bank account today on my work machine.
Uh well, let's pause for a second so we can
(39:26):
all go change our passwords and then we'll return to
explore the future of the workplace surveillance conspiracy. Okay, so
this is this is the thing I wanted to bring
up with you, Matt, and I'm really interested to see
what our fellow listeners think about this. So what if
(39:51):
an employer finds something and finds evidence of something that
is against company policy, not like not necessarily um a crime,
maybe just some like they were they were sloppy with
confidential information, or they did some kind of violation of policy,
like they're not allowed to be on personal uh personal
(40:16):
sites or something like that during work hours, but they were.
What if the employer doesn't, you know, immediately flag that
and ask them to discontinue that behavior. What if they
save that as AMMO as leverage for the future, you
know what I mean? Like that that is possible? Yeah,
I guess so, I'm trying to imagine this. I think
(40:36):
there are only a few scenarios where that could occur.
It reminds me of a discussion we had with a
certain person that came on our show that I won't
name of like saving Ammo for like contract disputes, you know, um,
for the future. But I don't know. I can't imagine.
I can't imagine they're not being some pr nightmare for
(40:59):
a company that like saves compromise on their employees, right right, Well,
think about it. Maybe, I agree would be a rarefied field,
But think about it. Maybe in the world of politics
that that's where that information could be useful and actionable.
When we're looking at the future workplace surveillance. That is
(41:21):
an extreme example. I think it's safe to say that
the majority of companies are not scheming to like blackmail
and extort their employees, not necessarily because it's an ethical quantry,
more so because it's like why it's not worth the effort.
It's kind of like a Rube Goldberg esque approach to
getting people to do stuff you want. You could just
(41:43):
ask them, you do pay them to work? Yeah, you know, Yeah,
that's the thing. A lot of this feels like, so,
I don't know, covert coercion to get your employees to
do what you want them to do, rather than just
being an active you know, an active boss without monitoring,
an active manager, without micromanaging. There's a you know, you
(42:08):
can do it. I I don't know if I don't
want to see it. I don't know. We run teams
here and and I don't know if we're good at
it or not. I I guess we have to get
feedback from our people. But it feels like you can
be hands on without being a micro manager and without
employing the most massive, intrusive micromanagement available, which is this
(42:30):
boss ware. Yeah, and the concerns are pretty self evident here.
Your job is conspiring, but they're not necessarily conspiring against you.
They're conspiring to make sure that you're focused. And most people,
if we're being honest are not about to risk their
livelihoods rocking the boat for privacy. You know what I mean. Like,
if you are not somehow being monitored yet, your odds
(42:54):
to be monitored in the future are incredibly high. And
that is because of is explosion of people working remotely
or working from home. Back in in fact, found this
survey by an off it called Gardner, and their survey
showed that of organizations across the planet are already using
(43:18):
some form of employee movement data, seventeen percent again across
the planet, we're already monitoring computer usage information and sixteen
percent we're monitoring activity on Microsoft Outlook or generic calendar usage.
That was pre pandemic. The numbers have skyrocketed since and
(43:40):
it's pretty difficult to find accurate numbers right now, just
because it all happened so quickly. Your employer can legally
monitor almost anything you do at work. They're like the
laws are written such that they they can't follow you
in the bathroom basically, but they know when you're going,
(44:02):
they know Norman, they know what you're doing, and really
it makes sense they can do this as long as
the reason for their monitoring. The rationale is important enough
to them. This is this goes into like reading mail.
You get snail mail that goes to a business. Uh,
for instance, our job. Our job has never like gone
(44:25):
through packages sent to us. But that's that's not because
they can't. It's because most of the people who work
with really cool and then also there frankly, they're probably
too busy. Yeah, we definitely Uh, I don't think anyone's
gone through that. I did notice one time we had
a letter, and actual snail mail letter that looked as
(44:47):
though it had been opened and then reclosed, you know,
using Steam. What that's flattering. It's a long time ago.
I cared enough. Wow, and they were just checking for anthrax.
I think, so, yeah, this this thing is real. It's
very real. I'd like to just quickly mentioned Ben. Right
(45:09):
before we started rolling, I texted our boss and asked
that person if there's any employee monitoring software installed in
our computers or if they use any kind of productivity analytics,
and this person said they were unaware of such software.
(45:30):
I was unable to locate anything physically running on my machine,
and that makes me feel pretty good about our situation. Yeah,
we're fortunate, especially when you consider how closely other people
are monitored to a degree it becomes tyrannical. You know,
uh this, of course, it's not necessarily sinister. Of course,
(45:53):
not all companies are the same. There are almost certainly
bad faith actors out there, right. It is completely possible,
I would even say plausible, that there's you know, a
creepy individual who might be using this to spy on
someone inappropriately. But that doesn't mean that the entire company
is doing right. But the problem there is that there
(46:16):
is no uniform process to address like data breaches, for instance,
and there's not really a lot of leeway on the
employees side to draw clear work home boundaries. The legislation
just isn't there yet. And until that stuff catches up,
it is seriously, I know it sounds a little stereotypical
(46:36):
to say this, It is seriously best to assume that
you are being observed whenever you are around work equipment.
Just just just know it, embrace it. And it's a
weird scenario mm hmm, yeah, but also it's it's strange.
One thing that really stuck out to me about a
(46:58):
lot of this criticism is that state level actors can
do a lot of the same stuff you know what
I mean. This is what we're seeing is a strategy
and a technique across the public private sphere. Don't do anything.
You're a camera if you don't want your boss, possibly
our n ESA in turn steve to see it. And
(47:20):
be careful with your personal devices to Like Matt, you
made the excellent point earlier. He said, Hey, maybe you
can listen at work, but don't listen on your on
your work device. Here's the thing, though, There's a question
I have for you. If say, for instance, you have
your own personal smartphone and you have installed work apps
(47:41):
on there of some sort, like a productivity thing or
an email app of some kind, how much access does
that give your employer to the other stuff on your
personal device. That's interesting Theoretically with something like Microsoft, they've
got Viva insights and monitoring that occurs with us, that
(48:04):
that happens to us, ben our Microsoft Outlook and our
calendar and all the other massive Microsoft three sweet can
be monitored if it's on your device. But that doesn't
mean that they can look at everything else that you
do on your phone. At least to my knowledge from
my understanding of reading several articles here, all kind of
(48:27):
associated with stuff life life hackers, security gladiators, Gizmoto. I
looked at a bunch of that stuff just to see
what can happen. But that does mean that certain activity
on your personal device is monitored, um in some way,
whether it's just by Microsoft and with Viva, it's just
(48:49):
giving you insights on your activity, and it's not sharing
that necessarily with your boss. But I don't know if
it can access your microphone or camera, and in that
in that case, you would have to give that system
like you'd have to give Microsoft teams access to your
camera and microphone. Oh shoot, which we all do right, yeah,
(49:14):
well said. And this is where we stand on the
precipice right of all the surveillance to come, it's important
to know that it's not just your employer doing it.
It's kind of like, obviously every country that can afford
spies is gonna hire spies because they work your job.
(49:34):
Isn't out to get you, quote unquote, but they do
want to have as much visibility as possible, and they've
kind of I think the pendulum swung. And what's happened
is that because so many people are working from home,
and because so many leaders in a given company or
organization want to be able to show that they produce results.
(49:55):
They're clamping down and they're they're trying to learn as
much about what their employees are doing as possible. That
itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem is
that the line between your expectations, your completely reasonable expectations
of privacy, and the desires of an employer, that line
(50:18):
is really fuzzy, and it's align that's easy to step on.
It's a line that's easy to cross, and it's very
difficult to pull things back once you've gone over that threshold.
So be safe out there, folks. Can't wait to hear
your war stories about odd surveillance monitoring. I can't. You know,
these are kind of episodes that UH sometimes lead like
(50:42):
I t experts to write to us with tips and tricks,
and I love that. So shout out to our pal
James if you're listening that. Uh. I always enjoyed those conversations.
But yeah, give us tips and tricks that we can
share with your fellow listeners about how to how to
maintain that boundary as best as you can to be safe,
you know, Yeah, no matter what you're doing or what's
(51:05):
what you think might be monitoring. Just remember that Cortana
and Alexa and your Google Home and your phone can
always hear you because it's always listening for you to
wake it up, so it doesn't really matter. That's very inspiring, yep,
very inspiring. Mr Frederick uh We we want to hear
(51:28):
from you. What do you think the future of workplace
surveillance is? Let us know. We try to be easy
to find online. You can find us on Facebook and
Twitter and YouTube at Conspiracy Stuff on Instagram. We are
a Conspiracy Stuff show. If you don't want to use
social media, you can instead use your phone and your
mouth to contact us via voice. Our number is one
(51:51):
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you'll have three minutes. Those three minutes are yours. Go nuts,
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us know if we can use your name and door
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one three three st d w y t K, I'd
(52:11):
just like to say it um when you call. Don't
feel like you have to censor yourself. If you have
a tail that needs more than three minutes, just write
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on websites to start digging into, and you will have
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All you have to do is drop us a line
where we are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.
(52:53):
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Ben Bowlin
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