Keystroke Logging Declared Illegal in Alberta 310
Meshach writes "The Globe and Mail has a story about how
keystroke logging has been declared illegal in Alberta Canada. The ruling applies to companies using logging as a means to track employees." From the article: " The employee, who was not named, worked as a computer technician for six months in 2004. Ms. Silver said it was a job where productivity was hard to measure. 'We thought that using an objective check through the computer would be the most fair and objective way to do that,' she said Wednesday."
monitoring (Score:5, Interesting)
Questionable results... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gotta rethink things (Score:3, Interesting)
US centric thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)
[sarcasm]Why not let the employer and police monitor everything you do? You only have something to hide if you are a criminal.[/sarcasm]
Right... (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the amount of typing is a sure indicator of productivity.
Sorry, but about the only thing it will tell you is whether someone is spending time using email, message boards, and instant messages for personal use.
And it's poor at that, because unless they're doing A LOT of non-work related typing, you don't really know how much time they're spending doing non-work related stuff. We all type at different speeds. Maybe it's all on their lunch hour.
Besides, you can check all that stuff in other, less intrusive ways.
Objective? Please. Except in obvious cases (like data entry as another poster mentioned) this requires subjective review by its very nature.
Not precisely illegal (Score:1, Interesting)
The commissioner didn't say you couldn't monitor employees. He also didn't say that you have to tell employees when you are monitoring them.
This is a pretty narrow ruiling.
So that would make it illegal to... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Child labour in Alberta (Score:3, Interesting)
EASY SOLUTION (Score:3, Interesting)
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 http :
and save it into "test.txt". Then it's only matter of copying and pasting text. You can use the mouse if you want.
results: Shift, right, ctrl-c, right right right right... etc.
It's not that there aren't workarounds. It's just that they haven't been found yet.
This Is Bulls**t. (Score:2, Interesting)
At a place I used to work, half the people were salesmen, who, because they went out on the road all the time, had laptops. They would change their Windows XP passwords and not tell management. They would change MANY passwords (to supplier e-commerce sites, etc.) and not tell management. They would use Hotmail to avoid corporate email (which was logged). Our IT guy would go onto their computer when they were out at lunch to run Ad-Aware and the antivirus (salesmen don't give a damn) and would find MOUNTAINS of porn, half-finished resumes, and a copy of our entire corporate network on the guy's hard drive! That's not acceptable, and the guy was warned, but all he did was a) change his password, b) set his screensaver to password protected and had a hotkey to launch it whenever he got up from his desk.
The pendulum has swung too far against the OWNERS of the property in favour of the USERS of said property.
This just makes corporate espionage, like stealing customer lists and selling them to the competition undetected all the easier.
Re:US centric thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
They're helping me because it serves their short term interests. If screwing me over did so instead, they'd do it in a heart beat. There is no control on buisnesses. You'll take your money elsewhere? They don't give a fuck- there's a million more like you. At least with politicians, you can vote them out of office. And in local elections, your vote *does* matter.
Corporations are the dictators of the 20th century. They have almost unlimited power when compared to the ordinary human being. They legally can't be touched (the corporate veil) and made accountable for their actions. There are no checks and balances over them. The only reason they aren't dictators in fact is that they have no army. And the only reason they don't is because the government wouldn't allow it. If they could march an army into some third world country and force them to work instead of hiring them as workers, they would in a second.
Given a choice between vesting power in an organization with checks and balances and with citizen control (government) and one without either (corporations, which are owned by a small plutocracy), I'll give it to the one I have some control over.
And no, neither is not an option. In many cases I wish it was. But welcome to the real world- money IS power. If they have power, they will use it. And they will not use it to benefit you- they will use it to benefit themselves. Look at the laws they buy (DCMA, broadcast flag, pork barrel projects, etc). None of these benefit you, they benefit themselves. The only thing we can use is the one power we have left- the government. Decide what we will and won't allow a corporation to do, a set of ethics they must follow to be allowed to incorporate and sell their goods in America. Punish those who break it harshly- pierce the corporate veil.
Does that solution have issues? Of coruse it does, it causes even more power to be placed in the government's hands. But better there than where no checks and balances exist. The main risk is from religious fanatics who will try and use it to limit products in violation of the first amendment "for the children". Of course thats a general problem with any form of government, and the solution to it needs to be dealt with separately
Re:Child labour in Alberta (Score:3, Interesting)
The "as young as 12" thing doesn't surprise me, for years kids that age having been working through a loophole in the system where the "parent" is hired to do a job like being a paperboy or fast food but the kid does all the work and gets the money. What happened was the parents name and age would go down on the application, but the kids SIN (Canadian Social Security #) would be put down, so the kid even got the tax forms.
What I want to know personally is how this ruling applies to students (currently a university student in Alberta). I know that my High school had some hacked up version of tightVNC installed on each computer that at times would saturate the network, and made compiling when drawing on libraries on the network drive slow as death. While I would love to see the CBE get sued or similar over some keystroke logging issue, I doubt the privacy commission is going to listen to a bunch of whiney 17ish geeks. Eventually I just used a SSH tunnel to a Terminal Server at home for all the stuff I did at school, no screwing around with disks or network drives.
Medevo
Re:You're not thinking about what privacy means (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:monitoring (Score:4, Interesting)
My company is works the other way:
My employees work for 6 hours per day - they're paid for 8.
In exchange for having 2 hours of time to spend with family, avoid rush hour, and walk in the park, I expect no screwing around. Period.
It works! They're productive and happy at the same time. I think I'm actually getting a bargain, because they work *hard* during those six hours. They get to go home and have a life.
Philosophical Difference (Score:2, Interesting)
As a result there is more legislation regarding workers rights than in the US. For example, in the US, your boss can come up to you and order you to pee in a bottle to see if you smoked a joint recently. In Canada, unless you are a pilot, railroad engineer etc where your performance could hurt others, this is forbidden. Also, I was surprised to find that in the US, paid vacation time is not a requirement. In Canada, you are entitled to two weeks per year minimum by law.
There are other examples, but you get the idea.
Re:Could be ok (Score:3, Interesting)