Category: Privacy Issues

The French Declare the Right to Disconnect from the Office

A recent French law gives workers the right to disconnect from their digital devices when off-work. This is an intriguing idea that other industrialized nations should consider imitating.

Some advocates cite the constant potential of immediate work obligations as contributing to greater levels of anxiety and burnout among modern workers. I can speak from personal experience about the alarm one feels upon receiving an urgent work-related e-mail at 7:15 in the evening. Plans have to be changed, and the few hours of free time at the end of the day are forfeited. 

Continue reading The French Declare the Right to Disconnect from the Office

Tech Giants Should Reconsider Their Role in Shaping Our Economic Future

“If you can access a service for free, or for a remarkably low price, you yourself might be the product.” That line, in an article called “Should the Tech Giants Reprogram Capitalism?” by Nicholas Barrett of The Economist, sent a chill down my spine.

Our physical bodies are not products, of course (thankfully). Our online activities are the product. Tech companies sell information about us to advertisers. By enabling those advertisers to pitch their products to us on sites that they know we frequent, tech companies sell our attention spans.

Continue reading Tech Giants Should Reconsider Their Role in Shaping Our Economic Future

UK Cops Use Facial Recognition Software to Scrutinize Festivalgoers

A recent story in The Guardian documents British law enforcement’s plan to use facial recognition software to scan the faces of thousands of attendees at an upcoming music festival in London. The article reports that police describe it as a “pilot project intended to look for suspected troublemakers to keep those attending safe.”

The police will scan faces and then check them against databases of images of people who have been previously arrested in order to identify potential troublemakers at the event.

Civil liberties advocates say that police lack legal authority for this action, and civil rights activists are concerned that law enforcement has chosen a predominantly Afro-Caribbean celebration to test this technology.

Continue reading UK Cops Use Facial Recognition Software to Scrutinize Festivalgoers

Company’s Tech Initiative Gets Under Employees’ Skin

NPR reports that a Midwestern company is offering to implant microchips into their workers. The article states that “Employees who have the rice-grain-sized RFID chip implanted between their thumb and forefinger can then use it ‘to make purchases in their break room micro market, open doors, login to computers, use the copy machine.’” Some workers have apparently already accepted the chip implants.

I understand how the convenience factor might be appealing to some people, although having to enter a login password to a work computer, being required to put money in the vending machine to purchase food, and needing to enter a four-digit code prior to making copies are the very definition of first-world problems.

Continue reading Company’s Tech Initiative Gets Under Employees’ Skin