The Surveillance Tech Waiting for Workers as They Return to the Office
Freeman writes:
Scan the online brochures of companies who sell workplace monitoring tech and you'd think the average American worker was a renegade poised to take their employer down at the next opportunity.
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A new wave of return-to-office mandates has arrived since the New Year, including at JP Morgan Chase, leading advertising agency WPP, and Amazon-not to mention President Trump's late January directive to the heads of federal agencies to "terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person ... on a full-time basis."
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The question is, what exactly are we returning to?Take any consumer tech buzzword of the 21st century and chances are it's already being widely used across the US to monitor time, attendance, and, in some cases, the productivity of workers, in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and fast food chains: RFID badges, GPS time clock apps, NFC apps, QR code clocking-in, Apple Watch badges, and palm, face, eye, voice, and finger scanners. Biometric scanners have long been sold to companies as a way to avoid hourly workers "buddy punching" for each other at the start and end of shifts-so-called "time theft." A return-to-office mandate and its enforcement opens the door for similar scenarios for salaried staff.
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HID's OmniKey platform. Designed for factories, hospitals, universities, and offices, this is essentially an all-encompassing RFID log-in and security system for employees, via smart cards, smartphone wallets, and wearables. These will not only monitor turnstile entrances, exits, and floor access by way of elevators but also parking, the use of meeting rooms, the cafeteria, printers, lockers, and yes, vending machine access.
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Depending on the survey, approximately 70 to 80 percent of large US employers now use some form of employee monitoring, and the likes of PwC have explicitly told workers that managers will be tracking their location to enforce a three-day office week policy.
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Wolfie Christl, a researcher of workplace surveillance for Cracked Labs, a nonprofit based in Vienna, Austria. "We're moving toward the use of all kinds of sensor data, and this kind of technology is certainly now moving into the offices. However, I think for many of these, it's questionable whether they really make sense there."
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Cracked Labs published a frankly terrifying 25-page case study report in November 2024 showing how systems of wireless networking, motion sensors, and Bluetooth beacons, whether intentionally or as a byproduct of their capabilities, can provide "behavioral monitoring and profiling" in office settings.
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