Lmst

- Startups, der sælger #bossware -produkter, skyder op over hele kloden 🌍
- »Little Tech"-økosystemet er underreguleret og i høj grad finansieret af VC
- Medarbejderne føler tab af autonomi, når de bliver styret af en #algoritme i stedet for et menneske

Teknologier, lover at spore, styre og overvåge arbejdere, i stigende grad ved hjælp af #AI, er ved at få fodfæste i udviklingslandene, ifølge en ny rapport fra https://home.coworker.org/ en NGO for arbejdstager-rettigheder
https://restofworld.org/2025/employee-surveillance-software-vc-funding/

"You mention the manager wants to see if the employee is really working, I mean, is the manager really working if they're just looking at these screenshots [of employees' desktops] all day?"

#JonathanGood, 2025

https://nz-tech-podcast.captivate.fm/episode/exploring-real-time-chemical-sensing-with-scentian-bio

#podcasts #GorillaTechnology #NZTech #BossWare #WorkplaceSurveillance

#Kickidler employee monitoring software abused in #ransomware attacks

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/kickidler-employee-monitoring-software-abused-in-ransomware-attacks/

#bossware #cybersecurity #privacy

Employee monitoring app leaks 21 million screenshots in real time

https://cybernews.com/security/employee-monitoring-app-leaks-millions-screenshots/

#privacy #bossware #cybersecurity #DataBreach

The rise of #bossware and workplace surveillance, in places where much of us spend a substantial amount of our time, is a growing concern and a complex issue that crosses both state and federal law.

There is a pressing need for clarity on legal and ethical aspects.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do:

1. Get to know the software. Research unfamiliar apps and browser extensions.

2. Understand the network. Company WiFi and VPNs can track your activity even on personal devices. Use a personal hotspot or a separate VPN service for personal tasks and communications.

3. As a rule of thumb, never trust work apps. Tools like Slack, Zoom, Google Workplace, and Microsoft Office track user activity and allow your employer to retrieve information, such as what meetings you attended and whether you had your camera or microphone on.

Finally, review workplace policies, ask the IT department directly, keep personal and work data separate, and check your state's workplace surveillance laws as they vary across Australia.

#Bossware is not the #FutureOfWork. Nail this Joe Procopio quote to the door of every COO that wants to spend money on monitoring employees:

“There is no such thing as long-term sustainable success without human ingenuity."

https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/tech-industry-workers-have-become-cogs-in-a-broken-system/91157000”

Funny thing, what takes more time from actual, productive work is usually the #bossware tools and methodologies (ie., actually existing Agile). In my experience, companies are so paranoid that they require endless meetings and progress reports, even when all the goals have been met on time. Any engineer will tell you that they want to do actual work instead of that.

This is, at best, yet more AI hype full of buzzwords. At worst, a new level of terrifying #bossware https://www.wired.com/story/artificial-intelligence-work-organizational-strategy/

"Workers should have the right to know which of their data is being collected, who it's being shared by, and how it's being used. We all should have that right. That's what the actors' strike was partly motivated by: actors who were being ordered to wear mocap suits to produce data that could be used to produce a digital double of them, "training their replacement," but the replacement was a deepfake.

With a Trump administration on the horizon, the future of the FTC is in doubt. But the coalition for a new privacy law includes many of Trumpland's most powerful blocs – like Jan 6 rioters whose location was swept up by Google and handed over to the FBI. A strong privacy law would protect their Fourth Amendment rights – but also the rights of BLM protesters who experienced this far more often, and with far worse consequences, than the insurrectionists.

The "we do it with an app, so it's not illegal" ruse is wearing thinner by the day. When you have a boss for an app, your real boss gets an accountability sink, a convenient scapegoat that can be blamed for your misery.

The fact that this makes you worse at your job, that it loses your boss money, is no guarantee that you will be spared. Rich people make great marks, and they can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Markets won't solve this one – but worker power can."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

#Work #WageSlavery #WorkerSurveillance #Bossware #Privacy #AI #DataProtection #FTC #USA

#Bossware is unfair (in the legal sense, too) – https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

This hawtch-hawtch metaphore by Dr. Seuss does indeed sumrises really well the shape 2.0. #neoliberalism and #surveillancecapitalism have taken over the last 20 years. As @pluralistic says it, we are becoming "reverse centaurs", that is, we are augmenting machines supposed to do our job better but can't. We are like Elon Musk's supposedly autonomous robots....humans disguised as robots.

Bedoya starts with a delightful analogy to The Hawtch-Hawtch, a mythical town from a Dr Seuss poem. The Hawtch-Hawtch economy is based on beekeeping, and the Hawtchers develop an overwhelming obsession with their bee's laziness, and determine to wring more work (and more honey) out of him. So they appoint a "bee-watcher." But the bee doesn't produce any more honey, which leads the Hawtchers to suspect their bee-watcher might be sleeping on the job, so they hire a bee-watcher-watcher. When that doesn't work, they hire a bee-watcher-watcher-watcher, and so on and on.

Nice. EU hacker collective reverse engineer #bossware app and Italy fines the company (again) from @pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/

Happy #LaborDay! In this piece from 2020, our staff investigates #bossware– tech that bosses use to surveil and control their workers, and how to protect yourself.https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/inside-invasive-secretive-bossware-tracking-workers

"#privacy risks in #Office365: The cloud version of Microsoft Office contains a #bossware mode that allows bosses to monitor their workers' keystrokes for spelling, content, and accuracy, and produce neat charts of which employees are least "productive."
The joke's on the boss, though: Office 365 also compare your department's to your competitors…

#Microsoft is gathering your trade secrets and handing it out to your direct competitors."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/01/eruditio-libertas-est/

"Using the anonymized data in Aware's analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, according to Schumann. Aware's dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors, he said."

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/02/09/ai-might-be-reading-your-slack-teams-messages-using-tech-from-aware.html

#bossware #IA #unions

@georgebaily

In a fairer world, #bossware would only ever get the boss that deploys it into legal trouble, never the worker ...

Wiedzieliście, że Krytyka Polityczna publikuje po polsku eseje Cory'ego Doctorowa @pluralistic?

Np. ten o tym, że ciągłe patrzenie ludziom na ręce sprawia, że nie uczą się i nie rozwijają. Taka oczywistość, ale jednak nadzór np. w pracy jest powszechny. I ta nazwa #bossware - piękne:

https://krytykapolityczna.pl/swiat/inwigilacja-szkodzi-pracownikom-doctorow/

#Surveillance #Bossware #WorkplaceSurveillance #Privacy: "Learning, growth, and fulfillment all require a zone of privacy, a time and place where we are not observed. Far from making us accountable, continuous, fine-grained surveillance by authority figures just scares us into living a cramped, inauthentic version of ourselves, where growth is all but impossible. Others have observed the role this plays in right-wing culture war bullshit: "an armed society is a polite society" is code for "people who make me feel uncomfortable just by existing should be terrorized into hiding their authentic selves from me." The point of Don't Say Gay laws and anti-trans bills isn't to eliminate gender nonconformity – it's to drive it into hiding.

Given all this, it's no surprise that workers who face workplace surveillance in the name of "wellness" feel unwell as a result:" https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/15/wellness-taylorism/#sick-of-spying