Corona Daily 331: Big Brother is Recording Everything

Half a year of working from home has resulted in many surveys. On an average, WFH employees worked 48.5 minutes more every day, and the number of meetings went up by 13%. Internal emailing has increased. These are the quantitative findings of a large survey that covered 3.1 million employees from 21000 companies from 16 big cities of the world.

How could they organize such a large survey in a lockdown era? Very easily. All the data was procured online through an official surveillance software.

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Many companies ask employees to have their webcams and microphones on all the time. In some cases, employees must check-in thrice a day. In the name of IT security, employers are downloading surveillance tools into employees’ homes, computers and phones. If an employee uses a company laptop, the monitoring is considered absolutely legitimate. In other cases, employees’ consent is sought. Fearful of losing jobs, employees are permitting all demands made by their salary payer.

ActivTrak, HubStaff, Time Doctor, Teramind, Awareness technologies and other companies are unashamedly marketing their surveillance products. These apps monitor, time track and control employees- the twenty first century equivalent of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Their customer base and earnings have shot through the roof this year.

InterGuard can be installed on employees’ computers secretly. It has a brilliant feature of creating a minute-by-minute timeline of every website and app viewed by the employee, classifying each into ‘productive’ (e.g. company website, customer chat), and ‘unproductive’ (e.g. Netflix, YouTube). The system generates productivity scores, and ranks employees based on the scores. During an employee’s browsing, if the software comes across suspicious words, such as jobs, vacancies, LinkedIn, the employee’s superior immediately receives an alert.

InterGuard can record all emails, messages and keystrokes. It has a provision to take pictures of the employee every five seconds. The boss can sit and literally watch a movie of what his underling did during the day.

Zoom had an “attention tracking” setting that alerted the meeting host whenever an attendee focused his attention elsewhere. After thousands of complaints, Zoom recently removed it.

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Pragli app’s default setting sends an alert every day at 9 am. “Time to go to work!” Pragli monitors keyboard and mouse uses. If either is inactive for more than 15 seconds, the employee’s status changes from ‘active’ to ‘idle’. With that idle status visible to everyone, any boss can immediately start a video chat. One common question reported by many workers: “What are you working on exactly?” In a normal office, an employee could lie, here he can’t. Whatever he is working on is recorded minute-by-minute.

One unnamed employee (understandably most feedback is anonymous) said when she leaves her room briefly; she can hear the voice of her boss through her computer asking where she went. Another overwhelmed and exhausted employee said: ‘I am not working from home. I am living at work.’

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As if this was not enough, the employee is asked to attend game nights, lunchtime chats, company happy hours, and other teambuilding activities and events. During and after work hours, he is bombarded with the latest covid-19 advice, what he and his family should and shouldn’t do. This falls under employee welfare. The company website says “We are online 24/7”, making employees wonder if it applies to them individually.

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Corporations were based on the military model. That is why they have hierarchies, spans of control, superiors and subordinates. Conservative companies believe in monitoring and controlling, rather than trusting their staff. With physical control gone, insecure bosses become more insecure. In offices, there are ways and times to avoid your bosses. Unfortunately, that seems impossible now.

Ravi