The Dystopia of Workplace Surveillance
by Lynn Stuart Parramore from Al Jazeera
Imagine you’ve just arrived at your job with the Anywhere Bank call center. You switch on your computer and adjust the height of your chair. Then, you slide on the headset, positioning the mic in front of your lips.
Finally, Microsoft have gone too far. The thesis of this article is summed up in Microsoft’s own policy language:
We will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to protect our customers or enforce the terms governing the use of the services.
A 1970 Lorillard memo titled “Why Menthols?” explains how menthol cigarettes were marketed to exploit racist myths for profit: Negroes, as the story goes, are said to be possessed by an almost genetic body odor. Now whether or not this is real is irrelevant. More importantly, Negroes recognize the existence of this “myth.” And they realize that “Whitey” does too.
