Comment by marekful
6 hours ago
It's so pathetic that people actually put up with this. There are so many ways to stop that tracking from working and no, your boss doesn't have the right to track you.
6 hours ago
It's so pathetic that people actually put up with this. There are so many ways to stop that tracking from working and no, your boss doesn't have the right to track you.
Until there is a law, there is nothing to stop them. So you need the law. First person to reach out to would be Ron Wyden, he has been a reliable advocate in this space.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/
Nothing legal prevents them from trying but if you block the tracking then your not in the wrong, and if you prove they tracked you in your lunch break and after work, you might have a good chance at winning in court for invasion of privacy.
Most of this will be under 'tracking the corporate asset'. They aren't tracking you as a person, but instead a laptop or phone of which they own or control. That's going to be much harder to defeat in the US.
Invasion of privacy is legal in the US.
Very true, I support this, but the law is still needed imho unless we're fine normalizing the continuation of corporations tightening the screws on workers to keep their labor costs within their desired tolerances. It's about control, of course, as it always is. Protect the human from bad actors, broadly speaking.
I would be chuffed if I see someone present on breaking this at Defcon this year.
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Other things can stop things.
Without some sort of organized intervention this sort of tracking will only get worse. A law is the basic way to enforce collective behavior, but sure, if your government doesn't pass one then you should organize some other way. Probably a union in this case.
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No, he can't track you but yes, he can track his devices.
If you install corporate teams on your personal device, you are part of the problem.
You must request a device for that and never mix personal and professional stuff.
Why pathetic? People were breaking the rules, not working, going for walks and making dinners during WORK TIME.
Lazy and fraudulent people destroyed WFH. Should be banned forever. 20% people working, 80% slacking
> going for walks and making dinners during WORK TIME
Yet, when in the office, drinking coffee, watercooler smalltalk and smoking at the entrance is somehow considered work time.
Leave us alone. The output is all that matters.
Does UPS have the right to know the location of its drivers?
Of course it does.
I don’t know that we can draw broad conclusions about worker rights on this issue.
My company probably DOES need to know that I’m not taking company information to certain locations like overseas if I work in certain industries like if I am in healthcare covered by HIPAA and I’m handling PHI.
Hyperbolic example, but if I’m taking a teams call or reading my email in North Korea, that is a gigantic problem.
Right to privacy doesn’t exist inside of employer apps and company devices, and there isn’t a strong argument that it should exist.
I would argue that UPS has the right to know the location of its packages and trucks, but not its drivers. If a driver has to leave for a few hours for a family emergency, UPS no longer has the right to track that driver, as long as they are not using company equipment for travel.
> "Of course it does."
Of course it doesn't. (What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence).
> "there isn’t a strong argument that it should exist."
Did you google for anything on this topic? Did you set a timer for 5 minutes and spend some time trying hard to think of one? Did you look at other countries and their regulations (e.g. Germany?[1]) and why they ended up that way?
[1] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employee-monitoring-in-ger...
Before computers and internet, a manager might have been allowed to take work files home to work on them. Or workers on the road, might have stacks of company files with them in their car.
How did companies enforce the worker not taking the files with them on their international trip? Just by punishment when it was discovered after the fact. Things worked fine. It was good enough.
There is no need for additional surveillance, just because computers and internet can be used to do it.
UPS has a right to know the location of their trucks.
> Right to privacy doesn’t exist inside of employer apps and company devices
Indeed, but the right of an employer to have you carry their device outside of their building also doesn't exist.