Thursday, September 20, 2007

Big Brother CEO

This article from Popular Mechanics on surveillance in the workplace reminds me of a Chinese proverb: If you suspect a man, don't employ him, and if you employ him, don't suspect him.

An excerpt:

You may think the data is yours, but the equipment is theirs, and employers reserve the right to micromanage all the bits and packets on their networks, computers and mobile devices. There’s no such thing as unreasonable search and seizure when it comes to company property, and the surveillance tools used by IT departments are getting stealthier and more powerful—and more heavily funded each year. How do you know if you’re under suspicion? You don’t. If it were your computer Keener was exploring, you’d probably never know.

“Our software agent runs in the background and rarely uses more than 20 percent of the computer’s processing power,” he says. “If you had an iPod or digital camera charging through the USB port, we could browse all the files that were stored onto the device.”


[HT: Instapundit ]

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