#surveillance

Anyone know why the cameras are in the south BTC parking lot (the ones outside of high theft stores)?

Wait until employees find out that IT was directed to remotely scan ALL laptop computers, looking for any software that could be used to appear the user is active online.

Typically used to simulate the mouse is in use, a comprehensive report has been shared with senior management and is now under review for what repercussions will be taken.

Irregardless if there is a legitimate reason for it, i.e attending a marathon online meeting or conducting a presentation and you don’t want your laptop to go to sleep, all those on the report are expected to be in for a big surprise.

Be prepared.

So...anyone else connecting the dots on why we are now heavily pushing Copilot (and all of M365)? Check out Microsoft's smart badge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw0HBKJlX-w) introduced at the Build Conference 2026. Scary stuff coming!

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on". It seems SAP is going in the same direction.

Our uptime on MS Teams and meeting time is already tracked. Management has also started to track browsing behavior using WalkMe which is now installed on all SAP computers. An HR colleague told me that they also tracking how often we come to office and work from home. And HR is discussing with the Betriebsrat how to connect these with Performance Management. And they are planning to trial AI cameras at some offices that will show how much time different colleagues spend in meetings and on their computer and lunch. All of this "surveillance" was included in new SAP policy updates.

Truth be told, I don't like this at all. The idea that I might get less appraisal and bonus because I had more wfh days or less Teams meetings than colleagues is appalling. A lot of work and meetings we still do are offline and that cannot be captured by these AI cameras so well. All of this seems so dystopian but several tech companies are copying Oracle and want this now.

Might as well leave your phone as well together with your laptop.

Fear of AI is at an all-time high. Not fear of a Skynet-style superintelligent singularity seizing power, generally speaking, but of something perhaps just as horrifying: that life under capitalism continues much as it always has, with one key difference — AI has made human labor obsolete.

A new survey by consulting firm Mercer polled nearly 1,000 executives across the United States. A jaw-dropped 98 percent of them said they have major organization design changes in the works around AI, while 99 percent expect AI will lead to layoffs over the next two years.

The Mercer report, first covered by TechSpot, also found a collapse in worker wellbeing as talk of AI dominates break rooms. In 2024, Mercer worker’s sentiment found 66 percent of employees surveyed said they are “thriving” in the workplace. By 2026, that number had fallen to just 44 percent.

At the same time, the number of workers who report being “unsatisfied” has skyrocketed, with over 20 percent of workers surveyed admitting they’re “unsatisfied but… don’t have a choice at this point and will be staying for the next 12 months​.”

How human resources managers plan to combat this workplace fatigue — symptomatic of a rapidly decaying labor market, not to mention stagnant wages across the board — is equally alarming. In the next two years, 49 percent of HR professionals say incorporating worker sentiments with behavioral data will become “critical” to managing labor on the job. A further 44 and 43 percent said the same of always-on surveillance platforms and AI chatbots, respectively.

To the business owners and corporatists of the world, this is the point of AI: to discipline human labor. That’s the large-scale economic process by which capitalists undermine workers’ bargaining power, through systemic mechanisms like debt, the so-called gig economy, unemployment, deskilling — and, according to some theorists, even the nuclear family.

In the workplace and outside of it, AI boosts these mechanisms, eroding workers’ power to demand change or even hold onto basic concessions like healthcare and pensions — labor rights begrudgingly pried from corporations after decades of workplace struggle.

The technology doesn’t even need to be particularly effective to achieve any of this. Business leaders like Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke are already using AI to squeeze more value from their workers, while venture capitalists use it to pry equity back from theirs. In some cases, managers are even using AI chatbots to decide who to fire.

In all, the picture is pretty grim. The richest men and women in the world have made it abundantly clear why they want AI. The tech may not be living up to their wild expectations quite yet, but they’re still unleashing it without hesitation. The only question is how workers respond now, before that hellish dystopia we all fear becomes our reality.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/99-percent-ceos-workers-ai-survey

You may now understand why employees' dissatisfaction at Dell sunk and will keep sinking.

Does anyone else feel like workplace monitring has gone way too far?

Badge swipes logged... VPN activity closely watched. Teams status checked (and tracked). Calendars scanned. Emails parsed... Productivity fu--ing evaluated.... AI note-takers showing up in meetings, nobody asked for them....

Then executives act surprised when morale is awful and people do not trust management. At this point, I assume every company laptop is basically a tracking device that also happens to run work apps.

Has anyone heard about the whole eBay harassment/stalking case against Ina and David Steiner? I’m honestly surprised we don’t already have a documentary over stuff from here, especially considering the automotive crossover. The story is completely insane. Executives and leadership allegedly sending creepy packages, surveillance, threats, and harassment over criticism in a newsletter.

I also learned that former eBay CEO Devin Wenig was elected to the board of General Motors in 2018 and remained there even after the stalking scandal became public. Feels like the kind of bizarre corporate story you would expect out of Silicon Valley or Oakland startup culture, not something involving a Fortune 500 company.

Anyone else think corporate surveillance has gotten completely out of control?

Badge swipes trackd... VPNs tracked. Teams status tracked. Meetings in Calendar tracked. All emails scanned. Fu--ing Productivity Metrics... AI note takers in meetings nobody ever asked for.

Then leadership wonders why morale is unlived and nobody trusts mgmt anymore.

At this point I just assume every company laptop is basically a monitoring device with some work tools installed on it.

Why at a location like Gemco ,does the company have 2 mobile trailers with Cameras 📷 posted up in the same area, having to spy on us?

One should be enough. What are the watching? Ballast? Shutdown power?

The company can pull images from flock cameras. Heres a website for anyone curious how often license plates are pulled and how much access this and other companies have to this data that is for sale.
https://haveibeenflocked.com/

Anyone have an insight on how that currently being tracked? Asking for a friend. :)

I overheard a conversation in a coffee corner where one colleague said that HR is tracking our surfing behavior, and that people who go to this site regularly are marked for the next round of layoffs.

Is this true? And if so, would that be legal, or could we challenge such a move?

It's not as anonymous as you think

Spoke at length with some engineers who are working on this. They are "optimizing" the company memory to work with the Palantir AI program. When did we become beholden to American surveillance companies like this? When data leaks happen or when Palantir sells this data to third parties, this is going to bite SAP in the a$$.

Meta employees rallying to stop meta from tracking their work electronically to train AI. Unionization is definitely on the table and they are gearing up for a vote. Is the VZ AI certification just a cover and they are tracking us electronically? We won’t hear about it from Dan because all hands proves zero information.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/meta-workers-revolt-against-mouse-tracking-technology-flyers-ask-if-they-want-to-work-at-the-employee-data-extraction-factory

I feel watched constantly. My keystrokes, my mouse moves, my breaks, my location. It's oppressive and intrusive. RTO has ruined this place.

That's it. Easy surveillance.

there’s something weirdly perfect about the badge becming the symbol of Ford now... not the blue oval not the products, not eng mastery... not quality.. not even the trucks anymore... it's all about the the badge. that plastic thing everybody has to drag into the building so some system somewhere can decide whether you were “collaborating” hard enough that day!

maybe that sounds dramatic, but what else are people supposed to think?? for years mgmt talked about trust, flexibility, culture, teamwork. They tlaked doing the right thing, all that normal corp sh-t that gets repeated on slides until nobody hears it anymore. then suddenly it all became hotel desks, badge tracking & attendance monitoring, Teams noise + tickets with no context, Outlook chaos, and this fu--ing feeling that your actual contribution matters less than whether your body crossed a doorway at the correct frequency.

That is the part i dont think mgmt gets. RTO was never just about driving in. it was never just about sitting near people. People already said this a 1000 times but it keeps getting ignored, guess it's easier to ingore. The work was getting done. Teams were oeprational & functioning. People had lives arranged around the expectations the company itself created. then the message changed and instead of giving adults an honest explanation. sooo... Ford gave everybody vague culture talk and a badge reader. once a company replaces trust with measuring kpis and attendance, we start measuring back...

That’s where we are now!!

We dont talk about vision anymore... They talk about which buildings badge in and badge out. they talk about hidden readers - wtf??? they talk about whether laptops are being tracked - wtf??? they talk about who gets to stay remote while everybody else burns time commuting to a hotel desk - wtf?? they talk about who is actually in the office and who just appears to be - disgusting .

I dont even know what is true anymore and that’s kind of the point... the rumor is now more believable than the official message because at least the rumor matches how the place feels.

people joke about badge games and the old badge switcheroo and whatever... the badpart is that nobody is shocked. that tells you pretty much all. when attendance becomes the culture - then compliance becomes the game. u are what u measure... when presence becomes more important than output we stop thinking like builders and start thinking like defendants - thats where we are right now. how do i protect myself and how do i avoid getting tagged and how do I make it through the week without becoming somebody’s spreadsheet problem. fu-k that - that is surveillance with a better word attached to it. the office itself doesnt even feel like a place people are excited to go to. hotel desks, noise, random seating, Teams sh-t, scattered documents, meetings that dont need to exist (and half people on the call are remote anyway - they are just 'luckier' than us) and tickets thrown over the wall with barely enough info to understand what anyone wants. Then we are supposed to pretend this is some magical face to face culture revival?? OMG!!! if anything, it makes the dysfunction harder to ignore because now everybody gets to sit inside it physically while being told it is good for them.

The double standard is what really eats at people some people are full remote some people call in from home. All whileothers deal with the commute and the badge counts. some people get flexibility and some people get monitored. leadership can dress that up however it wants but employees notice. they always notice. you cannot build morale on exceptions that nobody will ever explain. u cannot keep saying fairness and culture while one person gets freedom and another gets tracked like a bad actor by default...

F still has people who want to do good work... they are still here. engineers, IT people, managers trying to shield teams, coworkers helping each other survive the mess, people carrying extra responsibility after job cuts... people who know how broken the systems are but keep things moving anyway. the company is still being held together by people. not your fu--ing badge data. not your fu--ing attendance dashboards. not another fu--ing leadership slogan. just us, tired people who r trying to get through the day without letting the place take more from them than it already has.

so yea... the badge became the culture. NOT because we wanted it that way. because trust left first.

Coworker in GCC was screen sharing and reading off a PowerPoint. You could see his mouse hovering all over the place which seemed like a mouse jiggler.
Don't we have apps/IT/management tracking keystrokes etc?

A number of HR companies are turning toward AI that applies sentiment analysis to employee surveys.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/worker-surveillance-emotion-ai/687029/?gift=xFHwB96eiHLjRHiwv84DJGI4m7kA5QUxMmyoB3T8OlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAN-NApZlCA

How many folks around you leave early? We are doing some surveillance and any response would help. Thank you in advance!

Do huddle rooms have cameras, and if so, do they also record audio?

New surveillance commissioner in board of directors?

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/f5-adds-anand-eswaran-board-201000022.html

Yesterday, my computer started lagging and freezing. I use a high performance MacBook Pro, so this was odd. I tried to restart, but I was stopped by a pop-up that said "NexThink" software was being installed and restarting would cause data loss and performance issues. The popup disappeared in less than a second and my computer restarted.

Sure enough, when I checked my task manager logs, a handful of processes from "NexThink" were running, which I'd never seen on my machine before.

I was also one of the Mac users whose in-office time wasn't accounted for in the first quarter. So, while I'm hoping this is a fix to that issue, it seems like it's mostly just employee monitoring software.

https://x.com/Notwokenow/status/2048697287543538023?s=20

Just got called into a meeting about how long bathroom breaks “should” be, and what times we are “allowed” to take them.

AP has camera footage and tracks employees that are on the clock.

How is this legal!??

Just got out of a meeting with team members where one of the seniors alluded to a secret program that only seniors have access to. Even after trying to go into details of what they were referring to, the conversation quickly moved on from it. Why does it feel like they are going to be watching us and monitoring us more now than during Covid?

This notification confirms your on the list. This gets installed 10-15 days before layoff.

Stop looking at us. Let us patrol.

Got flagged for occasional coffee badging. They must be monitoring the cameras. Any others?

If you are fired or reprimanded because of Pega Workforce Intelligence it is defiantly cause for class action.
In summary, Pega Workforce Intelligence is generally considered a legal tool for workplace surveillance when used on company property, but it raises significant ethical and privacy concerns when not implemented transparently.

Auburn City Council discussed budget troubles and potential layoffs at a recent meeting. Residents and union leaders expressed strong concerns about proposed workforce reductions. Public speakers also questioned city transparency regarding records requests and spending. Concerns were raised about the use of Flock license plate surveillance technology. The council approved routine measures and began the new fiscal year budget review process.

https://www.fingerlakes1.com/2026/04/04/layoffs-surveillance-fears-and-transparency-concerns-dominate-auburn-council-meeting/

Be very careful I hear they pushed monitoring software to everyone and the are actively monitoring your activity levels

The IT utility that took screenshots of your browser has been removed.

https://share.google/yCnfFlv0cN1lZFXeM

Anyone else have Skan VA in their system tray? Employee monitoring software.