Australian Tax Office Seeks Keylogger To Combat RSI 138
schliz writes "The Australian Tax Office plans to track employees' keystrokes and mouse clicks in attempts to address the growing incidence of repetitive strain injuries (RSI) among staff. It hopes to purchase commercial, off-the-shelf 'pause or exercise break software' that delivers safety messages to users, while determining 'more information about the nature of computing use in the workplace.'"
Is this still... (Score:3, Interesting)
...a built in, ready to activate, feature of GNOME?
They do this every few years (Score:4, Interesting)
A number of Australian government departments toyed with a program called 'Workpace' (made in the Netherlands I believe). I fondly recall a pop-up window telling me to exercise my fingers by employing something that looked remarkably like the shocker.
In the end, it was just an annoyance. It doesn't take a program to tell you your staff need more frequent breaks, better equipment and better OHS reporting.
Re:Keystroke counter != Keylogger (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm...no. Nothing to see here, move along. From TFA -
Not surprising.
If the ATO is already monitoring its workers to the nth degree, why would they be announcing more monitoring.
I once did some work for the ATO, you need a background check to enter the building, police clearance to walk around unescorted, you are told up front everything you do and say is recorded, a joke can land you in court, you can be charged if you casually read something off someone's desk. You have to check in and check out with security. No photos, there are area's where you're not even permitted to carry your phone at all.
I dont believe in the slash-conspiracy that the gubbermit is bad and evil, all this security is necessary, the ATO has the largest database of the personal details of Australians, from car purchases to monthly pay stubs and there are corporations that would kill for that kind of data, the ATO's mandate is to keep it safe.
So I fully believe that this would be for OH&S (Occupational Health and Safety) because 1. Australian Government departments are very big on OH&S and 2. If the ATO is not already monitoring their own computers to a paranoid degree, they're doing it wrong.