Tech Work Remote Surveill- Keystroke Tracking, Screenshots, Facial Rec: Boss May Watch Post Pandemic
Last edited Sat Sep 25, 2021, 11:15 AM - Edit history (1)
- Washington Post, Sept. 24, 2021. - Ed. Keystroke tracking, screenshots, and facial recognition: The boss may be watching long after the pandemic ends. - What workers should know about corporate surveillance software as companies consider permanent remote work policies. -
When Kerrie Krutchik, an attorney for 34 years, was hired this spring for one of the legal field’s fastest-growing jobs, she expected to review case files at a pandemic-safe distance from the comfort of her Ohio home. Then she received a laptop in the mail with her instructions: To get paid, she’d have to comply with a company-mandated facial recognition system for every minute of her contract. If she looked away for too many seconds or shifted in her chair, she’d have to scan her face back in from three separate angles, a process she ended up doing several times a day.
For Krutchik, the laptop’s unblinking little camera light quickly became a nightmare — and a reminder of what her new work day might look like even after the pandemic fades.
After two weeks, she ended her contract and pledged never to consent to that kind of monitoring again. “It’s just this constant, unnecessary, nerve-racking stress: You’re trying to concentrate and in the back of your mind you know you’re on camera the entire time,” she said. “While you’re reviewing a document, you don’t know who is reviewing you.” The spread of the delta variant has kept many of America’s office employees working from home and fueled a rise in surveillance technologies by employers — in finance, law, technology and other industries — eager to keep tabs on their remote workforce. The facial recognition monitoring Krutchik experienced offers one of the stranger examples of America’s massive work-from-home experiment, because it relies on a glitchy and, to some, quite creepy camera system built to ensure workers don’t lose focus or break the rules.
The adoption of the technology coincides with an increase in companies’ use of more traditional monitoring software, which can track an employee’s computer keystrokes, take screenshots and in some cases record audio or video while they are working from home. Sometimes, this is done without their knowledge, which means companies have the potential to gain access to employees’ private details like banking or health information. Workers have little power to control how and when they’re being monitored, especially if they are using work-issued devices. Experts advise workers to assume they are being monitored if they’re in the office or using company equipment, and recommend they read the fine print when in comes to employee contracts. Market research firm Gartner says companies used more surveillance tools during the coronavirus pandemic to keep tabs on employees and monitor work productivity.
The no. of large employers using tools to track their workers doubled since the beginning of the pandemic to 60%. That number is expected to rise to 70% within the next 3 years, said Brian Kropp, chief of human resources research at Gartner.
And the software is expected to become even more sophisticated, telling employers how to turn the data they collect into actionable measures to drive the business. Soon it might do things like tell managers how employees work together via Zoom, understand who the main contributors are and how specific patterns may lead to specific results. “That’s going to be the evolution of the monitoring,” Kropp said. Companies say the tracking offers a critical way to ensure their employees are staying productive and telling the truth about how much they work when their bosses are many miles away. Some employers have voiced concerns that, without the monitoring, their workers might cut corners or pursue multiple jobs simultaneously, depriving them of the focus & labor they need to stay competitive in the remote-work era...
[Federal government to expand use of facial recognition despite growing concerns]
- Read More,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/24/remote-work-from-home-surveillance/
________
- Your Company could be spying on you: Surveill. software use up 50%+ since pandemic, Fortune, Sept. 1, 2021,
https://fortune.com/2021/09/01/companies-spying-on-employees-home-surveillance-remote-work-computer/
Most office workers are aware that their employer can gain access to the Slack messages, emails, & websites they visit on their company computer. But more extensive tracking of workers inside their own homes is relatively new, & it creates a new level of concern for workers’ privacy, said Calli Schroeder, global privacy counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center/EPIC. “Sometimes people are aware, but sometimes the tools are extremely hidden,”..
- Kerrie Krutchik poses for a portrait in the Park of Roses in Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 19. Krutchik had to get her face scanned by facial recognition software while working in her home office for a 2-week, 8 hour-a-day contract and says she'll never do it again.
= new reply since forum marked as read
