#surveillance

It's not as anonymous as you think

Spoke at length with some engineers who are working on this. They are "optimizing" the company memory to work with the Palantir AI program. When did we become beholden to American surveillance companies like this? When data leaks happen or when Palantir sells this data to third parties, this is going to bite SAP in the a$$.

Meta employees rallying to stop meta from tracking their work electronically to train AI. Unionization is definitely on the table and they are gearing up for a vote. Is the VZ AI certification just a cover and they are tracking us electronically? We won’t hear about it from Dan because all hands proves zero information.

https://www.techradar.com/pro/meta-workers-revolt-against-mouse-tracking-technology-flyers-ask-if-they-want-to-work-at-the-employee-data-extraction-factory

I feel watched constantly. My keystrokes, my mouse moves, my breaks, my location. It's oppressive and intrusive. RTO has ruined this place.

That's it. Easy surveillance.

there’s something weirdly perfect about the badge becming the symbol of Ford now... not the blue oval not the products, not eng mastery... not quality.. not even the trucks anymore... it's all about the the badge. that plastic thing everybody has to drag into the building so some system somewhere can decide whether you were “collaborating” hard enough that day!

maybe that sounds dramatic, but what else are people supposed to think?? for years mgmt talked about trust, flexibility, culture, teamwork. They tlaked doing the right thing, all that normal corp sh-t that gets repeated on slides until nobody hears it anymore. then suddenly it all became hotel desks, badge tracking & attendance monitoring, Teams noise + tickets with no context, Outlook chaos, and this fu--ing feeling that your actual contribution matters less than whether your body crossed a doorway at the correct frequency.

That is the part i dont think mgmt gets. RTO was never just about driving in. it was never just about sitting near people. People already said this a 1000 times but it keeps getting ignored, guess it's easier to ingore. The work was getting done. Teams were oeprational & functioning. People had lives arranged around the expectations the company itself created. then the message changed and instead of giving adults an honest explanation. sooo... Ford gave everybody vague culture talk and a badge reader. once a company replaces trust with measuring kpis and attendance, we start measuring back...

That’s where we are now!!

We dont talk about vision anymore... They talk about which buildings badge in and badge out. they talk about hidden readers - wtf??? they talk about whether laptops are being tracked - wtf??? they talk about who gets to stay remote while everybody else burns time commuting to a hotel desk - wtf?? they talk about who is actually in the office and who just appears to be - disgusting .

I dont even know what is true anymore and that’s kind of the point... the rumor is now more believable than the official message because at least the rumor matches how the place feels.

people joke about badge games and the old badge switcheroo and whatever... the badpart is that nobody is shocked. that tells you pretty much all. when attendance becomes the culture - then compliance becomes the game. u are what u measure... when presence becomes more important than output we stop thinking like builders and start thinking like defendants - thats where we are right now. how do i protect myself and how do i avoid getting tagged and how do I make it through the week without becoming somebody’s spreadsheet problem. fu-k that - that is surveillance with a better word attached to it. the office itself doesnt even feel like a place people are excited to go to. hotel desks, noise, random seating, Teams sh-t, scattered documents, meetings that dont need to exist (and half people on the call are remote anyway - they are just 'luckier' than us) and tickets thrown over the wall with barely enough info to understand what anyone wants. Then we are supposed to pretend this is some magical face to face culture revival?? OMG!!! if anything, it makes the dysfunction harder to ignore because now everybody gets to sit inside it physically while being told it is good for them.

The double standard is what really eats at people some people are full remote some people call in from home. All whileothers deal with the commute and the badge counts. some people get flexibility and some people get monitored. leadership can dress that up however it wants but employees notice. they always notice. you cannot build morale on exceptions that nobody will ever explain. u cannot keep saying fairness and culture while one person gets freedom and another gets tracked like a bad actor by default...

F still has people who want to do good work... they are still here. engineers, IT people, managers trying to shield teams, coworkers helping each other survive the mess, people carrying extra responsibility after job cuts... people who know how broken the systems are but keep things moving anyway. the company is still being held together by people. not your fu--ing badge data. not your fu--ing attendance dashboards. not another fu--ing leadership slogan. just us, tired people who r trying to get through the day without letting the place take more from them than it already has.

so yea... the badge became the culture. NOT because we wanted it that way. because trust left first.

Coworker in GCC was screen sharing and reading off a PowerPoint. You could see his mouse hovering all over the place which seemed like a mouse jiggler.
Don't we have apps/IT/management tracking keystrokes etc?

A number of HR companies are turning toward AI that applies sentiment analysis to employee surveys.

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/05/worker-surveillance-emotion-ai/687029/?gift=xFHwB96eiHLjRHiwv84DJGI4m7kA5QUxMmyoB3T8OlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAN-NApZlCA

How many folks around you leave early? We are doing some surveillance and any response would help. Thank you in advance!

Do huddle rooms have cameras, and if so, do they also record audio?

New surveillance commissioner in board of directors?

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/f5-adds-anand-eswaran-board-201000022.html

Yesterday, my computer started lagging and freezing. I use a high performance MacBook Pro, so this was odd. I tried to restart, but I was stopped by a pop-up that said "NexThink" software was being installed and restarting would cause data loss and performance issues. The popup disappeared in less than a second and my computer restarted.

Sure enough, when I checked my task manager logs, a handful of processes from "NexThink" were running, which I'd never seen on my machine before.

I was also one of the Mac users whose in-office time wasn't accounted for in the first quarter. So, while I'm hoping this is a fix to that issue, it seems like it's mostly just employee monitoring software.

https://x.com/Notwokenow/status/2048697287543538023?s=20

Just got called into a meeting about how long bathroom breaks “should” be, and what times we are “allowed” to take them.

AP has camera footage and tracks employees that are on the clock.

How is this legal!??

Just got out of a meeting with team members where one of the seniors alluded to a secret program that only seniors have access to. Even after trying to go into details of what they were referring to, the conversation quickly moved on from it. Why does it feel like they are going to be watching us and monitoring us more now than during Covid?

This notification confirms your on the list. This gets installed 10-15 days before layoff.

Stop looking at us. Let us patrol.

Got flagged for occasional coffee badging. They must be monitoring the cameras. Any others?

If you are fired or reprimanded because of Pega Workforce Intelligence it is defiantly cause for class action.
In summary, Pega Workforce Intelligence is generally considered a legal tool for workplace surveillance when used on company property, but it raises significant ethical and privacy concerns when not implemented transparently.

Auburn City Council discussed budget troubles and potential layoffs at a recent meeting. Residents and union leaders expressed strong concerns about proposed workforce reductions. Public speakers also questioned city transparency regarding records requests and spending. Concerns were raised about the use of Flock license plate surveillance technology. The council approved routine measures and began the new fiscal year budget review process.

https://www.fingerlakes1.com/2026/04/04/layoffs-surveillance-fears-and-transparency-concerns-dominate-auburn-council-meeting/

Be very careful I hear they pushed monitoring software to everyone and the are actively monitoring your activity levels

The IT utility that took screenshots of your browser has been removed.

https://share.google/yCnfFlv0cN1lZFXeM

Anyone else have Skan VA in their system tray? Employee monitoring software.

New software has been uploaded to all Molina Hourly employees computers that monitors everything you do and sends reports to upper management. Stay productive don't let your idle time add up. This is definitely going to be used to reduce the workforce.

If anyone here is providing information or screenshots to James Faris at Business Insider, be cautious!

I’ve heard from my VP who knows the identity of one of the informants that they’re watching them and waiting for them to slip up again. I'm told their IP address, document download timings, and personal email logins have all been tracked. They’re waiting to take action and may fire them for gross misconduct.

To James Faris, I know you're probably reading this forum and LinkedIn, cause you reached out there - It’s probably becoming clear why the comms team isn’t supplying you with any quotes for your stories, but some of your informants might lose their jobs.

Antropic said the dod couldn’t use their systems to spy on US citizens. OpenAI picked up the dod contract.
So how do US TikTok users feel about their data now on Oracle servers now?
How long before AI is spying on employees?

RTO is absolute insanity. I have 10 people on my team. None of us are in the same state outside of two people in Texas who aren't in the same city. We have to go back to the office, surrounded by employees we dont work with or collaborate with in any way, so we can join the same remote teams meetings we would while home. Now I find out from someone in cyber security that they are monitoring our key strokes, web searches and Microsoft apps.

RTO was about the executives leveraging their control over one of the few bright spots we had working here, flexibility.

Does anyone know if managers can see times we come in and how many hours we are in each day?

Leg T surplus is coming but first they are trying to fire you for misuse of company time. They have a usage report for websites and a list of people that are not working. The goal is to fire 20- it will save the company over 2 million dollars.

Be warned they are firing people like crazy for not wrapping on orders. AI is reporting this daily to management.

Are they only on meeting surveillance and maybe PowerPoint deck duty? I've never seen them do anything more than be surveillance on Teams meetings, and fly into other offices to be surveillance in person. Why do we need so many levels of surveillance? Can someone observe their teams and find out if they are doing something more than just sitting there?

What are your thoughts about workplace technology analytics being rolled out? What is that?

Walk into any corporate office, and you’ll hear the same anxious conversation: Will AI eliminate white-collar jobs?

The optimists insist that new jobs will emerge to replace the ones we lose—after all, it has happened in previous tech revolutions. Pragmatists argue the workforce will simply become more productive with artificial intelligence, creating more value with minimal job cuts. And the pessimists fear entry-level knowledge workers will become obsolete altogether.

But this debate misses a crucial dynamic. Right now, workers are potentially training AI how to make them obsolete. And they often don’t realize it.

The kind of AI used by companies, called an enterprise AI system, can capture everything you do at work and use that information to train itself. These systems can record your interactions within the platform—the prompts you write, the documents you create, the queries you run.

In other words, the company can potentially track—and claim ownership of—every keystroke you make within the system, every idea you document there, every tool you build using that platform. It can identify what approaches worked best, what email language got responses and how you approached those clients. And all that knowledge can become part of the company AI, so it may eventually know, down to increasingly fine details, how you do your job.

Then comes the dangerous part for employees: The AI can pass that information along to anybody else who does your job, or in some cases just do the job itself. Over time, you could become a lot less valuable to your employer—and a lot more replaceable.

This dynamic may fundamentally change the relationship between employer and employee. The stakes are so high and so urgent that both sides are rushing to position (or protect) themselves. Executives are rapidly implementing enterprise AI systems, seeking productivity gains and competitive advantage—and they often aren’t disclosing the implications for job security and privacy. Meanwhile, at least some employees are secretly adopting personal AI tools, sometimes violating corporate policies, so that their employers can’t capture everything they know and do.
Capturing the essence

To understand what’s coming, you need to understand what enterprise AI systems actually are. These are different from the interfaces you use at home. Enterprise AI systems are platforms that integrate directly into corporate workflows—think of Microsoft Copilot embedded in Word, Excel and Outlook, or Salesforce’s Einstein AI woven into customer-relationship management. These systems sit inside the tools where you already work. And they can potentially capture much of your work within the platform, learning from many interactions, and embedding that knowledge into company-owned infrastructure.

What once lived only in employees’ heads, built through years of experience and hard-won expertise, is increasingly being institutionalized in real time. When you leave, at least some of your knowledge stays behind, embedded in systems that will be used by the AI and by your replacement (if a replacement is needed at all).

Imagine that you’re a senior software engineer debugging a system crash. You run a bunch of tests to figure out the problem, and when you discover the solution isn’t in the documentation, you develop a novel workaround. You share the solution with the company, obviously, but the expertise and techniques that you brought to the problem were all yours, in a fundamental way. You figured out the workaround because of what you know and how you work.
That is the way things used to be, anyway. When you do your work through enterprise AI, though, the system doesn’t just record your solution. It can capture your problem-solving approach: which questions you asked first, how you refined the search when initial attempts failed, potentially even the logical steps that led you from symptom to cause. The next time junior engineers face a similar crash, the system may be able to guide them through elements of the methodology you used.

You haven’t lost your expertise. But now the employer also has access to key aspects of that expertise, in a form it controls and can deploy to other employees without you. It has a partial blueprint for how you think, and some of the knowledge that once made you indispensable is now a reproducible company asset.
Making it personal

These revolutionary changes seem to put workers in a tight spot. But I believe employees have an alternative—one that isn’t easy, but could help move the power dynamic back in their favor. Specifically: Employees should consider avoiding their company AI systems when possible and use personal AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or dozens of others.

These tools operate on completely different terms than enterprise AI. You access them directly. You own your prompts, your workflows, your customizations. The knowledge you create stays with you. Most critically, when you walk out the door, your AI-enhanced capabilities walk with you.

Maybe you’re required to use your company’s enterprise AI for client work. But all the strategic thinking you do before engaging with clients? Develop that using personal AI tools.

I spoke with a regional vice president at an energy company who does exactly that: He uses his firm’s enterprise system for required compliance and documentation, but develops new analytical approaches and tests complex decisions in personal AI tools. The novel insights stay his.
What can be done?

Using personal AI tools is just the first step employees should take, however. To really change the power dynamic, they can act on other fronts.

• Negotiate upfront. When joining a company, people should treat access to AI tools like intellectual-property ownership. Most employment agreements cover IP created on the job, but employees should dig further into a company’s policies before signing on: What gets captured through enterprise AI? How long is that data retained? Can you use personal AI tools for skill development? Can you request deletion of your contributions if you leave?

Most companies haven’t thought through these questions yet, which means there is room to establish reasonable boundaries before you’re locked in.

• Support collective action. Individual opt-out of AI is often impossible, so unions and professional associations need to pay attention. With collective bargaining, workers could demand transparency about the use of enterprise AI and demand fair compensation for the knowledge it gathers. Without collective power, individual employees will keep clicking “accept” on agreements that restructure their jobs simply because they have no alternative.

Concerted employee action may start to change the AI calculus. Employers may find that enterprise AI systems do capture knowledge, but at a steep cost: They may drive away the most talented employees, ones who realize they can build more valuable, portable capabilities with personal tools.

AI is breaking the traditional model of employment in real time faster than anyone realizes. The companies and employees who understand these dynamics will position themselves to capture AI’s benefits. Those who don’t may find themselves on the losing side of the biggest workplace shift in a generation.

Just trust what this leadership team tells you. Look past the quarter-zip smiles and forced enthusiasm and you will see a mountain of corporate spin. CP called out “incredible collaboration” this week...People at desks were not collaborating they were talking about how bad this place has become and looking to duck when you walk by. At least two leaders on this panel are openly planning their exits and they are not invested in fixing anything.... like you they want out. Watch the clown show from yesterday if you think that translates into work-life balance for you ask yourself why. Here’s what this really means for you. Every keystroke is tracked. Independent thinking is gone even when you are right, you follow “Crown math.” Your work feeds leadership payouts, not long term stability. This ends the same way it always does. Leadership cashes out and another company gets stripped down. You deal with the fallout masked as 'goals' and “Clear” and “transparent” are just words here like PURPLE was... how'd that go. Their face and actions tell a different story. I have only 1 question. Are you listening to what they say, or watching what they do? Just look at each face even they can no longer play the game. Shame

Do not access this website while connected to the guest WiFi in the office! They’ve begun to track usage back to your phone’s IP address.

I came across this article recently that Microsoft Teams will soon be able to track worker locations by their phone if it is installed. The new feature was due to be released in January but was delayed to this March.

I thought the timing was interesting since we were originally due back in the office 4 days a week in January but it was pushed back to March. Could be a coincidence but I wanted to share this so people aren't surprised when MS Teams begins to share your location 24/7 with WFC.

https://cybernews.com/tech/microsoft-teams-employee-tracking-feature-delay-managers-look-forward/

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