Surveillance Startup Used Own Cameras To Harass Coworkers (vice.com) 54
An anonymous reader shares a report: Verkada, a fast-growing Silicon Valley surveillance startup, equips its offices in downtown San Mateo, California, with its own state-of-the-art security cameras. Last year, a sales director on the company's sales team abused their access to these cameras to take and post photos of colleagues in a Slack channel called #RawVerkadawgz where they made sexually explicit jokes about women who worked at the company, according to a report in IPVM, which Motherboard independently verified and obtained more information about. "Face match... find me a squirt," the sales director wrote in the company Slack channel in August 2019, according to one screenshot obtained by Motherboard. The comment was posted along with a series of photos of employees' faces captured with the office's surveillance system which were patched together using a Verkada facial recognition feature. "Face search," as it's called, can pinpoint an individual in a sea of faces. The pinpointed face, in this instance, belonged to a Verkada employee, her mouth wide open. In addition to verifying the incident with three sources who worked at Verkada at the time, Motherboard compared the format of the images posted to those included in Verkada's publicly available demo videos to verify that they were indeed captured by the company's surveillance cameras.
My grandmother warned me: (Score:2)
Never work for a lobotomy company.
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Something about parents and condoms.
Re: Working for a surveillance company (Score:2)
Are there pro-privacy anti-maskers? I suppose there might be. How indeed do they square those two? Let me guess... I'll wear a mask if I choose, to evade facial recognition, but I'll be damned if you will encourage or require me to wear a mask to protect others. Yes, that's right, I'm a selfish dick!
"[T]he sales director" (Score:3)
Why am I not surprised?
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So now we know that a sales director at some random company is a jerk.
How is this headline-worthy? Why is it news?
Re:"[T]he sales director" (Score:5, Insightful)
Verkada's product is a cloud-based video security system, and this incident raises a lot of questions about whether customers should trust them with their data. Why did a sales director have access to their internal security system? If it was intentional, why did they think that was a good idea, and does that poor judgement extend to their products? If it was unintentional are they that sloppy with their execution of their products?
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Why did a sales director have access to their internal security system?
You didn't even read the summary.
Motherboard compared the format of the images posted to those included in Verkada's publicly available demo videos to verify that they were indeed captured by the company's surveillance cameras.
Verkada used internal company video for their demos. Sales staff have access to the demo videos.
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So now we know that a sales director at some random company is a jerk.
How is this headline-worthy? Why is it news?
Because this jerk is selling his toy to entities that will have an impact on the lives of millions.
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Because this jerk is selling his toy to entities that will have an impact on the lives of millions.
Because computers and smart phones don't have an impact on people at all. I have a feeling you, much like that sales director, routinely abuse your access and act in a similar way.
Do as I say... Not as I do... (Score:2)
With power comes responsibility.. Sadly, some of us don't step up and take responsibly when we are in positions of power.
I'm just going to guess. They didn't have an "acceptable use" policy for their surveillance system in the employee handbook. Well, they do now.
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With power comes responsibility
So much for the saying. Too bad that, in reality, irresponsibility and recklessness are among the preferable prerequisites to gain positions of power in the first place.
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How about "They didn't enforce an 'acceptable use' policy", and now they'll claim to.
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Sadly, some of us don't step up and take responsibly when we are in positions of power.
These are companies in the US.
They never take responsibility unless forced by finance or law.
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These are companies in a market economy.
They never take responsibility unless forced by finance or law.
FTFY
Damn right. Stop orking cows in the office already (Score:2)
Some people.
Um, thanks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of me wants to thank these jerkoffs for helping illustrate how these systems can be abused.
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Learning that a company's internal surveillance system can be abused is hardly a surprise. What is much more interesting is the company's response to it.
The guy who posted those images, and anyone who commented on them, should have been terminated on the spot, with the rest disciplined just for being part of the Slack channel. The problem is that Verkada's failure to do so has become public knowledge, and now e
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I would expect more. This is clearly a controversial topic. There is an expectation that any party involved should have internal controls to stop this kind of abuse. If multiple individuals in various departments were involved, what you say is enough because controls can't prevent collusion.
But this looks like a case where the company not only ignored bad behaviour, but also doesn't have any controls to prevent individuals from doing things like this. This speaks more about the company's culture and att
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> This speaks more about the company's culture and attitude in this space than one bad apple.
Yes, exactly. And as a potential customer, I would have to take into account the company's culture and attitude before deciding to do business with said company.
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> This speaks more about the company's culture and attitude in this space than one bad apple.
Yes, exactly. And as a potential customer, I would have to take into account the company's culture and attitude before deciding to do business with said company.
Can we then presume you've stopped buying from Amazon?
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This speaks more about the company's culture and attitude in this space than one bad apple.
No, it doesn't. Prove me wrong with credible evidence.
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My reaction too - a company selling stuff that could be abused, it has incentive to avoid any appearance of this stuff being abused. In fact, it should sponsor research and promote user groups that work to manage these products only constructively, legally, and usefully.
And yet the Sales director themself goes and abuses it.
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I have nothing to hide blah blah blah (Score:3)
Hopefully, this will shut the privacy-invasion shills the fuck up.
People play favorites, are prejudiced, are vindictive for reasons both real and imagined, and are sexual perverts. Why should anyone feel safe with them watching us from behind closed doors?
Generally speaking (Score:3)
Re: Based and redpilled (Score:2)
Or we can eliminate the problem at the source - eliminate men from the office.
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Public Decorum. (Score:4, Interesting)
Even for people who are normally big jerks. They will normally keep a good public level of decorum.
There is often a fine line, between making your workplace and informal open environment to a toxic workplace of harassment.
Normally workplaces that have some degree of formal decorum, tend to keep out of the news, and employees tend to stay happy enough, and customers don't get frustrated so quickly.
Work is work, it shouldn't be like a party, or your college Frat. You are working with people who may not be your friends, no do you pick them to join the company because you personally like them. But because they will be able to do the job well.
I have some clashes with people at work, but I can still work with them, a clash is often just a slight moment of discomfort then we both get over it. However if you have a case where these type of problems happen all the time. Being able to work with each other becomes much more difficult.
Join our team! (Score:5, Insightful)
From Verkada's ad on Glassdoor:
"Join our team, and help us rethink what it means to be physically safe."
I'm thinking, if being sexually harassed on the job, or as a company being the target of a sexual harassment lawsuit, is Verkada's idea of being "physically safe", they might want to take another look at their business plan.
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Hearing this news, I agree that they have rethought what it means to be physically safe. Most of us would probably describe that condition as "not safe", but it's certainly a rethinking of it.
Ok that's a good point. Maybe they're demonstrating to the rest of us what "physically safe" is going to come to mean.
Re: Join our team! (Score:2)
The "real" problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me guess, everybody's gonna shrug off that the company was using the equipment to watch employees at all and jump all over the sexualization of the surveillance footage? I feel like both are equally reprehensible.
A sales dude being a perv. Not exactly a shock. But why he has access to internal surveillance rather than the HR department? That's a question for the ages right there.
Not that HR departments are above reproach, but sales is guaranteed to be filled with sleaze.
Re:The "real" problem here. (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently the company choose to fill the sales positions with jocks, and both put them under pressure to make numbers (or else) and encouraged the atmosphere to be "fun".
While I think it would be unfair to make assumptions about jocks, it seems like the company cultural choices may have helped bring out the negative stereotypical behavior jocks are famous for.
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So what? (Score:3)
Dumb, ignorant, mean or criminal people can be found anywhere. The incident carries no more weight than had it happened at a nameless shoe store or a Burger King. I can understand the controversy that it may imply, but to do some would also imply that people who work for security companies were somehow more heroic or saintly than others, perhaps less capable of committing crimes than employees of other companies, and there is no good reason to assume so.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you install cameras everywhere in your office they will be abused. Sooner or later.
If you feel the need to install cameras in your office then you have some serious problems and the wrong solution.
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The cameras were used to prove the guilt in the end, which is the point of it. Only how it came to it may seem controversial, but cameras remain a tool in catching criminals and putting them to justice, and this is the case here, too. So you're still getting it wrong when you think installing cameras was wrong. CCTV cameras have helped to convict countless criminals over the years and they will continue to do so. Only young and naive people still put their personal feelings over the gain CCTV cameras have g
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So is eating meat. We kill animals to eat them. Many things we do are justified by the ends. What's your point?
When your wallet and phone gets stolen at your work place will you complain to your boss. He or she will tell you they don't have time for you, because you've already complained about not wanting CCTV. Now you complain about wanting your stolen items back and so in the end will you complain about your boss not helping you. You really are complaining so you can justify not needing to grow up.
Not at all surprised... (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all surprised these jackwagons would do this. I had to actually block all email from their domains because they flatly refused to stop emailing and harassing our employees. We are a security integrator, and they wouldnt take no for an answer when we told them we were not interested in partnering/selling their product. If Bob said no, He'd go around him and go ask Sally to intercede on their behalf to get our execs to listen.
And it wasnt spammy mailing lists. It was manual emails from VERY aggressive sales weasels.
Finally our Director of Security told us to outright block all comms from them. I think my boss even put number blocks on their known phone numbers as well.
It should be... (Score:5, Insightful)
...shut TF down. This company has clearly not demonstrated enough common sense, or common courtesy, let alone maturity, to be responsible for a system that can be so easily misused. Moreover, the incredibly weak punishment meted out just reinforces that this company is concerned only with itself and doesn't really give much of a damn about those who are abused. If it isn't shut down it should be so heavily fined that its business plan is ruined. The world will be just fine without another cavalier privacy abuser.
O.B.I.T. (Score:2)
Senator Orville (taking Grover's testimony in the hearing room): Weren't you in favor of O.B.I.T?
Colonel Grover: I was at first. But I was wrong. (now fighting to compose himself) It's the most hideous creation ever conceived. No one can laugh... or joke. It watches!
Lomax (revealed as an alien): The machines are everywhere! Oh you'll find them all, you're a zealous
Shocker, a sales director who's a jerk? No way! (Score:2)
I'm actually going to be working for a smaller tech company in my next job, and stories like this make me wonder whether that was a good idea. I assume this company is one of those small startups that locks their employees in the office 90 hours a week, so you're bound to self-select for former frat bros and similar ultra-extroverts.
Even so, this brings up 2 key issues -- 1, thank you very much for giving a concrete real-world example of how a "pick out any face in a crowd" tool can be abused, and 2, sales