Is Your Boss Spying on You? Inside New Workplace Surveillance

Popular Mechanics ^ | September 20, 2007 | Glenn Derene

[decimon]

Jeffrey W. Keener is a corporate keymaster—one of a rapidly growing number of security professionals who can unlock all your office secrets. Whether you’re on a PC in the next room or a Mac in Madagascar, Keener is just a few keystrokes away from watching the contents of strangers’ hard drives whiz by. It may seem Orwellian, but this constant monitoring is a crucial cog in the well-oiled machine of business investigation—and one more inevitable tick on the countdown to a surveillance society. I saw it in action last week at the fourth-floor New York satellite office of California-based Guidance Software (which boasts Halliburton, Lowe’s and many Fortune 500 companies among its clients), as Keener called up one of his surveillance programs.

[decimon]

Via Instapundit.

I guess my problem with this is that it is no better than the people using it. How would the people you work for use this?

[dawn53]

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

Anybody that's using a company PC and thinks that they're not being monitored should probably think again. If you're at work (for a company with a decent sized IT department) and on FR right now, chances are your employer is aware of it. Food for thought.

[StolarStorm]

I had a manager use her access to private info to advance her career. She used it to back stab competitors and get people she didn't like fired. That’s the problem with this sort of thing....

[robertpaulsen]

"Jeffrey W. Keener is a corporate keymaster ..."

Is this him?

[decimon]

I had a manager use her access to private info to advance her career. She used it to back stab competitors and get people she didn't like fired. That’s the problem with this sort of thing....

That rings too true. All is fair.

[decimon]

There’s a guy who’s seen too much.

[from occupied ga]

IT department) and on FR right now, chances are your employer is aware of it. Food for thought.

I'm sure they are. Periodically IT locks out a bunch of web sites including FR. It usually takes no more than 2 hours for FR to get unlocked. I can only conclude that someone in the executive management likes FR and scalds the butts of the internet Cary Nations in IT.

[Drango]

Hey FRiends...It’s a WORK computer.

Don’t surf FR, popular mechanics, naughty cheerleaders, the stock market, NASCAR or anything else your boss might object to.

[decimon]

Don’t surf FR, popular mechanics, naughty cheerleaders, the stock market, NASCAR or anything else your boss might object to.

You're...uhh...not on the job right now, are you?

[Drango]

I AM the boss!

[decimon]

I AM the boss!

So much for that leadership by example stuff. :-)

[Zuben Elgenubi]

What happens if one uses a corporate laptop from home, connecting to the web via personal high-speed connection. Is there software that monitors this as well?

[300magnum]

Then write yourself up. ;-)

[GOP_Proud]

If you're at work (for a company with a decent sized IT department) and on FR right now, chances are your employer is aware of it.

Yup. I kept having trouble with our IT people blocking me from conservative websites. If I went to Rush everyday, suddenly it would be blocked. Same with Laura Ingraham website. It never happened with FR though. I think they just were'nt saavy enough to know what it was. I experimented and went to Air America for a few days. Nothing happened. It was easy to tell that it was personal. This was just lunchtime surfing, mind you. I resolved the issue by bringing my own laptop from home.

[OCCASparky]

They can. Certainly the browser cache and other traces are left even if you think you've cleaned the cache, etc.

At my last company, we used VPN access, so you couldn't use your "personal" Net connection even if you wanted to. Regardless of where you were, you had to log onto VPN, then hook up to the Net via their servers.

[Lazamataz]

I AM the boss!

Get back to work.

Or yer fired.

[decimon]

“They can’t trace you, Laz, you have Zone Alarm!”

[shorty_harris]

Heh. I work for a fairly small company (government contractor). Some time back, the IT guys came by my office and installed some ‘updates’ to my Win2k dell laptop. Made it all but unusable. I bought a new hard drive for it, and installed Linux on it. A couple of weeks later one of the IT guys came by my office again, and said “something’s wrong with your computer...we can’t access it from the network”. I told him what I’d done, and he just shrugged his shoulders and left. I haven’t heard anything more from them, and it’s been several months.

[decimon]

I work for a fairly small company (government contractor).

Be on the lookout for Suburbans.

[RicocheT]

Trust and respect is a two way deal, if they treat employees like potential criminals, businesses may get back what they dish out.

Businesses have a right to watch out for malicious intrusions from outside their networks and to watch out for disloyal employees sending proprietary information to outside competitors. That right should be exercised in a balanced manner that does not unduly intrude on other employees who do their jobs well and browse the Internet on breaks for news or harmless entertainment.