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Comment by stingraycharles

4 hours ago

I think the keyword is “can”.

It is allowed, contrary to eg the EU, where this is not allowed.

It’s not true that it’s not allowed in the EU. There’s the Barbalescu ruling which is case law that says employers must fulfill a bunch of criteria around informing employees, the necessity of the monitoring, and they are not allowed to impose blanket bans on private use, but it is still legal to monitor employees in the EU.

Yeah, I know they can. I just can't believe it's normalized and that people simply accept it. Good on the EU for pushing back.

  • I guess from my perspective there are even more dire problems in the US that I'm surprised people accept. But it seems they don't know, or care, or know that they should care.

    Perhaps it's the lack of proper authoritarian regime in the US' past that drives this. I believe the temporal proximity of such makes people aware of, and angry against, the many traps that such systems leave in their "law", so you can be imprisoned anytime for anything. EU has a bunch of countries with varying degree of such past.

    • Most people need to work to support themselves so it's quite inconvenient to single-handedly solve all of the problems in the US. Suggesting people simply don't know or care is very naive.

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  • You should expect it because it's the safest position to work from. Don't use your work device for non-work, they may be tracking something or everything and do you want that in that record.

    Additionally, don't use personal devices for work, but that is because of other reasons.

  • I'm surprised you can't believe it.

    Most companies large enough to have their own IT have monitoring and know what's going through their network. The larger the company, the more likely they're watching. I've personally never seen that information used against anybody unless they were looking at shady stuff (porn, hacking websites, etc.), but I'm sure they're monitoring.

    Even outsourced IT for small companies will often put "security" software like Sentinel One or Sophos on machines they manage, and those can track and block web traffic, report everything being installed, and even MITM HTTPS traffic.

    Personally I don't see the big deal. If I don't want my employer watching something, I don't do it on their network. I monitor what's going on in my tiny home network, and I expect anybody administrating larger networks does the same thing.

> It is allowed, contrary to eg the EU, where this is not allowed.

Its allows in most of the EU apart from germany where there are strict limits.

however you can still record what your users are doing for purposes of detecting fraud. This is where it differs from the USA, where they can do anything because they have no data protection laws.

It is allowed under certain circumstances.

  • I am pretty sure there would have to be a court order, i.e. a severe violation would have to have good ground to be suspected.

    • No court order. Just a suspicion against an individual, and a process to follow. Plus, you have to tell them. There is no mass surveillance without notice, correct.