[superuser2]

Because going to the bathroom is not directly productive, employees would see logging of bathroom usage as an attempt to improve productivity by encouraging people not to stick out as using the bathroom too often. That would be indicative of a larger cultural problem wherein management is trying to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of employees, generally by eliminating small pleasures like office social interaction and the ability to momentarily relax.

Indicating to MIT professors that they can't be trusted to use the bathroom responsibly is stupid because the consequences of "bathroom abuse" are very low - hell, who knows how many Nobel-prize-winning ideas were developed on the toilet. Further, they're not being paid to be present and take calls/help customers/make widgets. They're being paid to produce research findings. So even if they are spending all day in the bathrooms, as long as they're publishing, who cares?

Think about it like your house. I'll happily have keys made for extended family and close friends who are staying over. I know them, we will have an ongoing positive relationship, and I trust them. But what about the cleaning service? What about contractors? What about Airbnb guests? Given a checkbox, I'd definitely choose to log their entires. I probably wouldn't read the logs, but I'd feel better knowing they existed.

Before you say NSA, I'm collecting data on my house, not all the other houses on the block. I get to do that. There is no right to enter my house without letting met know about it.

This is MIT's house.