[dsacco]

> but your chosen solution is totalitarian surveillance in the workplace because an intern got offended?

Sigh

Totalitarianism is a socio-political paradigm, not a stand-in word to describe things you think constitute surveillance in the context of a business. Companies require the capability to maintain auditable records of employee activity on the information channels they own and manage. Your company is not recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street, it's protecting itself and other employees from potentially problematic abuse scenarios. These requirements are also directly imposed by a variety of regulations in various countries.

When you twist the meaning of loaded words like this to describe things you don't like, you make it very difficult for people to get past the hyperbole and take you seriously. You're conflating assaults on personal rights with the routine and mundane business practice of keeping auditable logs.

> I avoid workplaces which force shit like this. So do all the good developers I know, because they're people who can afford to be choosy.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, because almost all the good developers I know work in environments like this. So where does trading these anecdotes leave us? Do you really believe most competent software engineers don't work in companies that do this? In most cases, that means the company is actively breaking the law, or at best making adherence with the law very difficult and error-prone.

[secstate]

I think the bigger problem that the OP pointed at is that whatever adjectives you attach to this, surveillance is almost always the wrong way to change behavior, unless your desired outcome is to make everyone suspicious of everyone else.

What's stopping these folks from creating an out-of-company channel to do the bullying and attacking in coordination via that means, or tricking the victim into joining them in the new side channel?

The answer to bullying or shitty office behavior is not monitoring. That cover-your-ass because the real answer is hard. Improve your company culture. Fire people who are detrimental to the team. KNOW YOUR TEAM! So often I hear about these things and what you find is a shitty manager who has no idea how to be a manager and says "well they get their work done."

[Cacti]

You realize this has far more to do with than workplace harassment, right? Have you never heard of employees using a competitors proprietary information? Or arranging fraudulent financial transactions to cover losses? Or discussing how to mislead investors or watchdog agencies? What do you expect this company to do when they are involved in a legal dispute like this, and have to explain to the court why they have company sanctioned, un-auditable computer systems/applications that helped their employees break serious state and national laws?

[secstate]

I suppose my experience in large corporations is limited. But I'm going to hazard a guess that for all but the biggest corps "company sanctioned" is a not an official term, and that most have given little-to-no thought about all the various ways they need to keep track of the way their employees communicate.

Keeping in context with the OP, Slack allowing admin access to all conversations is a cover-your-ass corporate move, not a solid new tool to combat workplace cultural issues. Perhaps once in a blue moon employee surveillance and bad culture might intersect and prove useful. But that should in no way be used to justify corporate surveillance.

As an elected government official, I understand the importance of papertrails and record-keeping. But the mere fact that so many companies USED SLACK WITHOUT THIS FEATURE, means most had no qualms about side channels being un-auditable before. And now this is just sweet sweet honey to corporate overlords.

[dsacco]

It doesn't make sense to refuse solutions that solve part of the problem, or that make the problem more manageable. Perfect is the enemy of good.

[ben509]

> because almost all the good developers I know work in environments

But they aren't True Good Developers... /s

[ravitation]

> socio-political paradigm

Sigh.

And workplaces are socio-political contexts... I didn't find it very difficult to get past his hyperbole, and I frankly find it hard to believe that you did. It isn't hard to argue that monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights - regardless of the fact that you arbitrarily draw the line at "recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street."

[dsacco]

> And workplaces are socio-political contexts

They're not governments, they're companies.

> monitoring channels that even just imply privacy, regardless of whether they take place in the workplace (or in academia, or at home) is a violation of personal rights

It isn't, unless your definition of "personal rights" includes "things I personally want which are neither codified in, nor protected by, laws."

[wfo]

>They're not governments, they're companies.

You're right, it's important to note they are more powerful and exercise more control over the lives of their employees than many governments, though employees often have the same opportunity to leave their company as they do their government (none).

>It isn't, unless your definition of "personal rights" includes "things I personally want which are neither codified in, nor protected by, laws."

Yes that's literally exactly what personal rights always means. Legal rights are legal rights, personal rights are a conception of what the person who uses the term wants or believes rights to be.

[ravitation]

> You're right, it's important to note they are more powerful and exercise more control over the lives of their employees than many governments, though employees often have the same opportunity to leave their company as they do their government (none).

Especially when they're also dependent on their corporation for healthcare and retirement...

This is exactly my point, it's effortless to compare corporations to government, especially in this context. For the other comment to base his argument around the word "totalitarian" seems nothing if not disingenuous, given that the meaning behind the word is clear.

[ravitation]

In what way are companies not trivially compared to states (governments) in this context (surveillance)? You're being intellectually disingenuous.

I mean, you completely (amusingly) misquoted that sentence. I said "it isn't hard to argue that [...]". I did not make an absolute statement that it is (a violation)... Come on now.

[dsacco]

> You're being intellectually disingenuous.

Okay...let me see if I understand you correctly. You're defending the other commenter's description of corporate logs as totalitarian surveillance, but you're saying that I'm being intellectually disingenuous because I'm pointing out that companies are not governments?

[ravitation]

No, I'm calling you intellectually disingenuous for reading a comment about internal corporate surveillance, and choosing to pontificate on word choice when the meaning is trivial to understand. Blatantly misquoting me also doesn't help.

[jiveturkey]

> imply privacy

Workplace provided communication mechanisms do not in any way imply privacy. Best practices are that staff sign an acknowledgement of such, so that there is no such confusion.

[ravitation]

So, if an acknowledgement is needed... It's needed because there might be an implication of privacy, right?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Generally speaking it’s easy to argue that employees have no expectation of privacy on the work network for the following reasons:

1. Regulation in most countries requires it to be this way, we’ll most countries any of us is likely to work in. Which is to say: The Law Hath Spoken, which is to say: The People Hath Decided.

2. The employer should have spelled this out to you at time of hire, and had you sign a document to verify you understand.

The problem here isn’t that the direct messages take place in the workplace, it’s that they take place on infrastructure owned by the workplace.

[ravitation]

I didn't actually argue that there was an expectation...

I only said that the comment I replied to relied on a purely arbitrary definition for what an invasion of personal privacy was... He argued that because "your company is not recording your activity in the privacy of your home or on the street" it wasn't unreasonable (or totalitarian), because the company was "protecting itself and other employees from potentially problematic abuse scenarios." Even though it's amusingly easy to imagine that a totalitarian regime would make the same argument for its own surveillance practices....