I Was Tortured for Days at Guantanamo Bay - <AUTHOR> https://www.newsweek.com/tortured-jessen-mitchell-rabbani-sorry-guantanamo-1483100 <comment><USER2> > I was minding my own business in Karachi when I was kidnapped and sold to > the U.S. for a bounty by Pakistani authorities, with the assurance that I > was a terrorist called Hassan Ghul.

Meanwhile, he's still in Guantanamo some 17 years later.

So what happened to the real Hassan Ghul?

Ghul was "Captured by Kurdish Peshmarga forces in Iraqi Kurdistan and turned over to American intelligence in early 2004... In 2006, Ghul was transferred to the custody of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, which released him in 2007."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Ghul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Ghul)

<comment><USER3> How come he is not released after all they know now? Isn't there anything someone can do? I feel kind of helpless reading these things.

<comment><USER4> I think the actual problem is where to put him. No single state in the US volunteers to take him on. It's not so much about the rather small risk that he could be a terrorist (or might have become radicalized/motivated by treating him as such) but rather that some voters might THINK there is still a risk, however small. And a politician that advocates for taking him in will be (figuratively) flogged if the former prisoner commits anything worse than a parking ticket in his further life.

Similar pressures apply to Pakistan and to other countries who might feel even less responsibility to free him.

<comment><USER5> But he still has citizenship, right? In Pakistan? They already know he's not who they thought he was, so what argument/law could they possibly use to not let him back into the country?

<comment><USER6> The government of Pakistan were the "kidnappers" that originally turned him over to the US. (He leaves that part out of his story.) They don't want him, and he was previously expelled from Saudi Arabia. I don't know what other options he might have.

<comment><USER7> > (He leaves that part out of his story.)

No, he doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait a minute, this guy way misidentified 17 years ago and imprisoned based on that misidentification. How is it possible that he is still in there? Are the authorities claiming he is actually who they misidentified him as or what is their excuse for his imprisonment?

I can see how they could get away with torturing suspected terrorists or whatever (although I don't agree with it) end even how they might keep holding someone who was wrongfully accused after more evidence surfaces (again, it would be deplorable, but not unlikely), but this is a completely third party that they imprisoned because they thought he was someone else! I don't see a single argument that could be made for not releasing him - not even a really bad one.

How is this not on the news every day? How is the UN and every single human rights org not all over this?? How does this not come up in every single US presidential debate?

<comment><USER8> I am sympathetic your outrage — but I think you're insufficiently cynical if you can't figure out why he's stuck in that concentration camp despite everyone agreeing he's innocent.

To release him now would be an admission of comprehensive institutional failure at _every_ level -- from his initial capture, through mis- identification, rendition, torture and ongoing imprisonment. The longer the error persists, the worse it gets, and the harder it becomes to admit it's all a horrible mistake. Nobody in the US government institutions that maintain his imprisonment will benefit from admitting it was all a mistake: to the military he's an embarrassment, and to the politicians, releasing him would be handing ammunition to their electoral rivals. (Democracy has failure modes: this is one of them.) So it'd be far better for everyone concerned if he'd quietly die of natural causes so they could bury him and the controversy at the same time.

(Finally, a _really_ cynical part of me thinks that maybe keeping an innocent bloke in jail for 17 years is expedient to a certain part of the US foreign affairs establishment because it sends a message to everyone outside the USA, world-wide: "we can fsck you up on a whim and there is _nothing_ anybody can do about it." In other words, it's dominance signaling. See also the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, imprisoned in Iran, for example.)

<comment><USER9> > an admission of comprehensive institutional failure

Not only that, but as soon as you release somebody who was wrongfully imprisoned, they can sue in civil courts, and they often win.

<comment><USER10> This is probably a silly question, but why can't they sue in civil court _whilst_ being imprisoned?

<comment><USER11> I think that's the whole point about Guantanamo - the local court is on the other side of a razor wire fence - in Cuba - by claiming that it's not US soil the US government avoids its own laws

<comment><USER12> Can't a US citizen be prosecuted by the US for a crime in a foreign country?

<comment><USER11> This is rather more about not letting these prisoners get access to to the inalienable rights that people in the US have ie the US constitution does not apply there, even though they convene US courts and try people - it's all rather 1984ish

<comment><USER13> Got to ask if our leaders believe in human rights and the rule of law, why do they pull shit like this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember reading an account by a young soldier in the second world war. The war was going badly for Germany, and he was conscripted into the army. Before he left, his father gave him some advice, based on his own experiences in the first world war.

The advice was to surrender to the first American he saw. The father had been taken prisoner by the US Army during the first world war, and his experience in captivity was such that he advised his own son to surrender to the Americans as quickly as possible, rather than fight.

How many lives, both American and others, were saved by this and others like him? We'll never know, but if your enemy believes that by surrendering to you he will be safe and well-treated, surely many.

So where are we now? Now the narrative is "If the Americans capture you, you will wish you were dead." Everyone who carries out these tortures is holding a gun to the head of every American soldier in the field. I'm surprised that torturers don't get fragged by their own side more often. Maybe they do.

</comment><comment><USER15> 17 years. My entire adult life. No resolution; no accountability. Deeply shameful.

<comment><USER16> The amazing part, to me, is that many people are either unaware or this, or (worse yet) vaguely know that the US tortures people when it likes, but still think of the country as a place that respects human rights or the rule of law.

I used to think that the concept of doublethink in 1984 was satire. It pains me to realize that it absolutely is not.

<comment><USER17> > The two "doctors" assured the military men who hired them and the lawyers > and politicians who signed it off that their techniques were entirely > "painless". Let me take you through the one described as "a technique in > which the detainees' wrists were tied together above their heads and they > were unable to lean against a wall or lie down." I was put down a hole, > suspended by my wrists from two chains that were locked to a horizontal > metal bar at a height where my feet could barely touch the ground. I was > left in total darkness for days—perhaps a week. Without food. Standing on > tiptoe in my own excrement.

I have to admit, it's hard to believe we'd allow this sort of thing these days and yet there is also recent history supporting this as a pattern of behavior [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse)

<comment><USER18> > I have to admit, it's hard to believe we'd allow this sort of thing these > day

Playing the devil's advocate for a moment- suppose you had some information about 9/11 one week before, would you torture your informant to get the precise date and location ? one person's rights in exchange for thousands.

And still under the devil's advocate cover- why are tortures different than killing terrorist (or "terrorists") in remote countries without trial while many times causing suffering collateral damage ?

<comment><USER19> It sounds like you've been watching too much _24_. In reality, according to the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, it doesn't seem to actually work effectively. Their key findings:

1\. The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.

2\. The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_interrogation_techniques)

<comment><USER20> "The Report" is a pretty good movie about this.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8236336/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8236336/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A somewhat more in depth article here: [https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op- ed/la-oe-rabbani-guantana...](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe- rabbani-guantanamo-prison-torture-20180726-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> The most shocking thing about this article are the comments down at the page. It's full of people claiming that he deserved the treatment for whatever unknown reasons. It's sickening.

<comment><USER23> It's possible the comments are fake or from real people but are paid for. This is a quite common tactic used by the russian propagandists.

<comment><USER24> It's a common tactic used by all propagandists. US included.

<comment><USER4> Surprisingly it's not really allowed to be paid for by US state actors.

I haven't yet found any reporting on such operations in English-speaking or even onshore media being tied back to the CIA or NSA or even political campaigns. The latter may even be allowed to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is what should be shown when US presidents talks about democracy, values, rights and bla bla bla

<comment><USER4> At the very least the US system dealt with this issue on its own.

It's important to remember that US authorities never used torture in general, and probably not at all since this program was used. That doesn't make what happened any better, but it doesn't mean the US is worse in this regard than China, North Korea or Russia. We just don't know the extent of human rights violations there, and we sort of assume that's their normal behavior anyway.

<comment><USER26> _> At the very least the US system dealt with this issue on its own._

We did?

Bush and Cheney are free men, as is the entire chain of those who advocated for torture (John Yoo still gets into the New York Times!), as are those who have carried out illegal orders to torture.

What did we do, exactly?

<comment><USER4> There is very little we don't know about what happened there. And it stopped happening

Good luck getting remotely as much from China or Russia...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There's no atrocity people in free democratic societies won't do if their standard of living is threatened.

<comment><USER28> The "democratic society" ie general population was never consulted on this. We can blame the executive and the CIA.

<comment><USER29> The democratic society doesn't participate in elections for congress to enable them to control the executive. The people that do vote punish candidates who appear "soft" on "enemies".

Out of all the senators and representatives, there was just 1 that opposed giving the executive carte blanche authorization to do whatever it wants to whoever it wants after the Sep 11, 2001 attacks. She received tons and tons of hate mail and death threats.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Lee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Lee)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The reality is that the reason these people aren't released is that they could sue.

<comment><USER31> Is money really the motive here when so much public money is spent so that we can continue to control the geo-politics of the middle-east + surrounding region for 'energy security' and so that private companies can profit from the energy exploitation?

It seems to me, a layman, that the motive could be legal or political instead.

<comment> Brave-Steak If the argument is "he could sue", the justification would be something like there's a miniscule risk that a lawsuit could lead to a Supreme Court decision that puts their kidnapping, torture and black site policies at risk. I don't think money is relevant here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a 2020 follow-up to Rabbani's 2017 Newsweek opinion piece, "Dear President Trump, Close Guantanamo Bay And Give Us A Fair Trial".

[https://www.newsweek.com/dear-president-trump-close- guantana...](https://www.newsweek.com/dear-president-trump-close-guantanamo- and-give-us-fair-trial-683080)

Rabbani previously went on hunger strike in 2017, but Guantanamo's force- feeding prevented him from dying:

[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/guantanamo- detainee-c...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/11/guantanamo-detainee- changed-force-feeding-policy-171115161210148.html)

Further details on Rabbani:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Ahmad_Ghulam_Rabbani)

<comment><USER32> The Los Angeles Times also published an op-ed from Rabbani in 2018:

[https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rabbani- guantana...](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rabbani-guantanamo- prison-torture-20180726-story.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't actually see any article here, perhaps due to adblocking. In any event, Outline finds the content: [https://outline.com/Fj5kB2](https://outline.com/Fj5kB2)

<comment><USER33> I used [https://beta.trimread.com/](https://beta.trimread.com/)

<comment><USER34> Nice, but does it have a extension to trigger it on a page? Couldn't find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's been so long, I had mostly forgotten about Guantanamo. Good they are bringing up the subject again.

</comment><comment><USER36> Every prison guard in the world "learns" that almost every convict is innocent and is there by accident.

While Guantanamo methods are supposedly shady (and illegal in light of basic human rights and conventions), there is a very non-zero chance that the article is a made up and/or incomplete story by this convict. I'm not going to claim anything, but let's not jump to conclusions on who is real evil based only on what someone says on the internet out of a prison cell.

It may sound hard for this guy, but if he's innocent, he is still outnumbered by cynical liars who claim the same everyday. They have time at their hands to figure out ways to make life easier and constant deception is one of the methods used.

Iow, _one_ of the answers on why it's not a daily headline is because UN, human rights and those who make headlines check a little deeper -or- put it under "opinion" tag (like in this article).

<comment><AUTHOR> You did note that in the meantime the real person he was mistaken for was also arrested?

<comment><USER36> If you was mistaken for someone else that doesn't automagically free you from crimes or connections you have yourself, apart from that person. The story doesn't tell us how he got caught. Was he kidnapped at night from his family _or_ busted at a secret meeting after a two-month intelligence operation - this can make a big difference.

I think you did read my comment as a definitive statement, while it just describes an option that was not mentioned itt, but has some potential to be true.

<comment><USER37> > If you was mistaken for someone else that doesn't automagically free you > from crimes or connections you have yourself, apart from that person

Wow. I have seen this attitude deployed by law enforcement against certain demographics "Well, he might not have committed _this_ crime, but he committed some other crime for sure. Pinning this on him is no biggie, he had it coming". This attitude makes a mockery of any nation that considers itself a nation ruled by law - that is not the way the law should work

<comment><USER36> _Well, he might not have committed this crime, but he committed some other crime for sure. Pinning this on him is no biggie, he had it coming_

That's bad, but I can't see this "attitude" in my comments. I thought I put enough "one of maybe possible, chances are, explanation".

This is not what I meant. Speaking about versions and possibilities is not the same as acting solely out of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This shouldn't be acceptable even if the guy was osama bin Laden. It makes America look deranged, a violent psychopathic country out for blood at any and all costs. It makes me truly ashamed to be American and pay American taxes, taxes that support this torture and blatant disregard for everyone's rights. It also makes me ashamed of my fellow Americans who support or supported the administrations that did this. There is no excuse for this and no excuse for supporting this, now or then. Apparently we can torture people to death without charges but can't get healthcare for our own people. That's some sick society.

</comment><comment><USER39> How nice of Newsweek to put that disclaimer at the end, so nobody will accuse them of opposing waterboarding.

<comment><USER40> This line is at the bottom of every opinion piece in every major newspaper on earth.

<comment><USER41> I think we all realise that, the point is, I think, they don't have to and sometimes the optics of doing so are bad.

<comment><USER40> On the contrary, I wish more media websites explicitly framed things as opinions, even in fairly clear-cut cases like this. I don't need or want the media to tell me what ethical opinion I should have.

<comment><USER42> The opinion pieces on some sites don't have a comments section. Telling, no?

<comment><USER43> Ideally, no news sites would have a comment section; they just attract crazy people.

<comment><USER42> Actual news, maybe, opinion pieces? No, or the whole thing is a comment section for one.

Plus even news articles can be corrected in comments. I've read many misleading articles where the flaws/bias are pointed out in comments, so ling as the author isn't allowed to "curate" them freely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well, here's a rare case where only death sentences seem appropriate. A custodial sentence (in the US) wouldn't be workable as we'd probably just end up with another president pardoning the heroic war criminals.

<comment><USER43> Did you read the article? There doesn't seem to be any particular evidence that he _did_ anything; he's detained without trial.

<comment><USER19> I think they might be referring (very unclearly) to the two people named in the headline. It still doesn't make sense though.

<comment><USER44> >very unclearly

Sure, if you really want to interpret me in the most uncharitable way possible.

<comment><USER19> Nothing uncharitable or deliberate about it. I had to read your comment about three times before I figured out that you might not mean the author. That's the _most_ charitable interpretation I could find, and I searched for it since I had trouble believing you would want the prisoner executed, which is the obvious interpretation. The number of downvotes you've received show that other people had the same difficulty.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Employers are monitoring computers, toilet breaks, even emotions - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/14/is-your-boss-secretly-or-not-so-secretly-watching-you <comment><USER3> Disclosure: im a "blue collar" automotive repair tech.

I cant understand why anyone would put up with a lot of this, but I can guess its probably some smug "white collar" manager who thinks production or revenue are down because people who didnt go to $college are inherently lazier than he is. Putting the screws on the workers is always the easiest way to compensate for bad decisions in the leadership change.

I worked in an old shop once that did an oil and air service for $59.99. We got a ton of business from a local rental car place because their service pool was under provisioned after their managers expanded the fleet. Now typically when working on simple stuff like a packaged deal, I inspect other stuff. Your brakes/brake lines and any leaks i might spot that seem dangerous. Those get logged in your invoice with a $0.00 fee. Typically the rental place would send the vehicle back for the additional service and a nice thank you box of donuts for the crew.

Management started seeing these 0.00 fees and assumed we were giving away free service because they didnt take the time to train on the computer system we all have to use. So they dismantled the service deal and started charging individually for everything, driving the cost up to close to $100. they also eliminated the inspection line items. We lost the rental place, and we had to spend 20 minutes hand writing issues we noticed on greasy post-its, which makes the shop look cheap.

I eventually quit the place when they started putting cameras in the garage bays "for safety" and changed our normal punch clock system to a fingerprint system...not because i dont like biometrics, but because they dont work when your hands are coated in 30 cars worth of grease and fluid. When the timeclocks broke down, we were always accused of sabotage.

<comment><USER4> > thinks production or revenue are down because people who didnt go to > $college are inherently lazier than he is.

"Than he is" is unnecessary: He may think himself lazy, even to a point of pride when he thinks of the clever stuff he gets away with.

There are fundamentally two schools of thought when it comes to management:

1\. People are inherently lazy, and work only to satisfy their needs - enjoying their job is at best a distant second priority. The best way to get things done is to drive them harder with closer monitoring, punishment for failures, and threats to their ability to satisfy their basic needs.

2\. People are inherently creative, and work to satisfy their desire to create - your job as an employer/manager is to help them not have to worry about lower needs on Maslow's pyramid. The best way to get things done is to give them them a vision, opportinities, targets, and tools to be productive.

Just quit a job after 5 years slaving under the former type of manager, and my life has never been better since I began working under the second.

<comment><USER5> I think those 2 schools of thought exist, because those 2 types of employees exist.

I've been a dev for 20 years now, and I've definitely had coworkers that fall into both those categories you mention.

I'm new-ish to management now, but I'm working under the (hopeful/optimistic) assumption that most people fall in the latter category. But I need to find a style that can handle both types of employees.

<comment><USER6> To some degree, both categories can also co-exist in the same person.

Some people are self-motivated when crunching numbers on spreadsheets because they find it satisfying but would need to be dragged kicking and screaming to provide phone support -- and vice-versa.

And there are probably some jobs that it's more common to be self-motivated for than others. Garbage collection? Data entry?

<comment><USER7> Even development. I hate having to deal with project management software, detailed estimations, estimating points, etc. I know some of the drudgery of process is necessary, I just don't like it.

<comment><USER8> I don't mind the software. The estimates are asinine though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Was I the only one who thought about Y.T's mother reading the bathroom tissue memo in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" (quoting below)?

 _Y.T. 's mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo..._

 _Y.T. 's mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary._

<comment><USER10> Going back to Gibson's Neuromancer 10 years before 'Snow Crash' is also eerie:

"He stepped out of the way to let a dark-suited sarariman by, spotting the Mitsubishi-Genentech logo tattooed across the back of the man's right hand.

Was it authentic? If that's for real, he thought, he's in for trouble. If it wasn't, served him right. M-G employees above a certain level were implanted with advanced microprocessors that monitored mutagen levels in the bloodstream. Gear like that would get you rolled in Night City, rolled straight into a black clinic."

<comment><USER11> "Cyber-" as in cyberpunk comes from cybernetics: _control systems_.

A key theme in cyberpunk is control and means of escaping or disrupting it. Both of which might be physical violence, chemical (qv Case, or the salaryman), informational, or psychological.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A majority of stuff mentioned in this article has to be outright illegal, if not borderline illegal when talking about privacy concerns. To get past it, they had to have put massive inclusions in their employee contracts and had employees sign off their entire existence to the company. It should also be noted that these happenings seem to all take place at sleazy, physical labor intensive companies. This isn't happening in any respectable sector I'd hope. I think the worst part is, is that these ideas are being created more and more by higher ups in companies and government who see no moral wrong in their plans. It doesn't affect them personally, but if it can be used in any way to further control a peon employee, then it's good for productivity. Even though it seems a bit like the article tries to defend this practice, there will never be a day on society where this is considered alright.

At the end of the day though, this is happening mostly to disposable workers who no on cares about. If one person complains about company overreach, well they can be replaced within 5 minutes. This is more something that lower income, down and out employees will have to worry about. This absolutely would not be tolerated to catch on to any respected industries/sectors. That's to not say physical labor workers aren't important, without them society would fall apart. It's that no one in authority typically cares about that type of worker and those employees concerns fall on deaf ears.

<comment><USER13> _This isn 't happening in any respectable sector I'd hope._

When a bigger company bought the smaller software company where I worked, almost the first thing they tried to do was change all the contracts to include things like universal IP claims and getting more visibility and control over things people were doing away from the office.

This culture was becoming pervasive even a few years ago, and the arrogance and contempt exhibited by the senior executive who came to tell us about it was almost unbelievable. It felt like he watched Darth Vader's "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" scene and thought it was an instruction manual.

The only meaningful difference seems to be that since it was a software business, a significant proportion of the developers essentially telling them to shove their deal or we'd walk was powerful enough to put a stop to it. Obviously people working in unskilled jobs where staff are fungible aren't so lucky. We're supposed to have employment laws to protect people in vulnerable positions like that from exploitation, but welcome to 2018 I guess.

<comment><USER14> The Darth Vader quote rings true with me. I was working at a logistics firm in its in-house dev team. There was a constant push to increase employee tracking. Toilets were fitted with swipe card readers, we were encouraged to "give time" to the company for free, and we came under huge pressure to install various apps on our phones so that we were always "connected in" to company operations. Some people accepted this, some refused. When there was too much push-back management just implemented it anyways.

For example, I wrote the performance monitoring web application. Each employees manager would rate them 1 (good) to 4 (bad) on 10 criteria (e.g. punctuality, quality of work etc). The scores would be averaged and you'd end up with a 1 to 4 rating. I was asked to change it so that an average score greater than 2.2 would automatically become a 4 and also a manager could arbitrarily lower the overall score if they wished. So someone getting a 1 average could be moved to a 4 if their manager felt like it. This formula was baked in to everyone's employment contract, so legally the company would have had to notify all staff and get their approval to make the change. I raised ethical concerns but was told to implement it and not tell anyone, or risk getting fired. I told people anyway, I knew I wasn't going to be working there much longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My employer recently started installing motion and heat sensors under employees' desks. They claim it is not for monitoring individuals, but for analyzing workspace usage and identifying free desks.

Given that the company in question is a bank, and teams must often be physically separated from each other for compliance and liability reasons, I am highly dubious of that explanation. Only a handful of people outside my immediate team can even access the floor where we're located, and they certainly couldn't just plop down at an empty desk and start working. And yet we have the sensors anyway.

And even if that _were_ the reason, the fact that they thought anyone would believe it is concerning in itself.

<comment><USER16> Watch out - you're about to receive a hot-desking initiative. See obviously only 80% of the workforce is in the building at any given time, so you don't really need to provision desk-space for all of them. There will definitely be no on-going productivity issues from all the time people spend trying to find somewhere to sit, or forcing people to setup their whole workspace every single day they come in.

<comment><USER17> yep. happened at my workplace. we had offices and cubicles. had sensors installed and now we are hot desking. many people don't like it and choose to work from home... so they are installing sensors under the hot desks to figure out how many of us are even coming in any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know not everyone has the option to rebel against this kind of totalitarianism at the workplace, but as a person without family obligations, I'd sooner become a traveling hobo than work for a company that wants to implant a chip under my skin or so much as monitor my toilet breaks. F* that. My self-respect has no price tag.

<comment><USER19> We badge in/out. Which is supposed to be security, but the reality is that they wanted to see everyone had an 8 hour workday.

I think it backfired because the amount of people coming in late/leaving early hasnt gotten better. Tbh, fridays seem worse.

Now that we know we are tracked, people dont even hide it. Sub 40 hour weeks are becoming norm.(assuming you dont have a major issue)

<comment><USER20> That's interesting, in my office we badge in, but not out. I would have thought that the need to evacuate the building would prevent locking the exits? What happens if you leave your badge at your desk while visiting the bathroom or kitchen and the fire alarm goes off?

<comment><USER19> During emergencies, all exits open.

<comment><USER18> I imagine the doors aren't locked from the inside out, and that keying-out is a voluntary process? Otherwise, your workplace is a disaster waiting to happen. All it's going to take is the fire detection system to fail, the unlocking system to break, or the front-desk person to fall asleep on the job. Or, worse yet, there's an active shooter and no time for someone else or some thing to unlock the doors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I once applied for a job that I thought was doing security engineering type stuff, and that's what the posting certainly described, but in the interview it quickly became a bait and switch, and they started explaining in detail about how their product monitors employees network usage in detail and the lengths they go through to make sure it is hidden on phones and workstations so employees don't know.

Nobody who worked there seemed to have a problem with it. I ended the interview early which apparently infuriated much of the company. Threats were made, but thankfully I never heard from them again.

You can say no to making bad things. Even if you work at Google, you can say no.

<comment><USER22> > I ended the interview early which apparently infuriated much of the company. > Threats were made, but thankfully I never heard from them again.

Wow. Most would be thrilled that an uninterested candidate is moving on quickly rather than getting the job then immediately quitting or being terminated (both of which are things I have seen).

Trying to _threaten_ a candidate into continuing an interview is just psychotic.

<comment><USER21> Oh no they just threatened to "end my career" if I ever talked about the interview or the company two days after I walked out. There are a lot of dirtbags in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been a "techie" as long as I can remember, and truly believe in the potential of tech to make the world a better place. I put no stock in the AI fear-mongering "summoning the demon" stuff, and harbor only modest concerns about the long-term danger of "technological unemployment."

But this... this is the thing that gets me questioning if human nature is just so broken that creating newer and better tech really is a net negative for the world. This kind of story is the one thing that makes me want to wash my hands of the whole lot of it, embrace anarcho-primitivism and go live in a shack in the woods in Montana or something.

Depressing doesn't even start to describe this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER24> Holy... I'm pretty sure that most of these things are illegal in Germany.

In any case, my prediction is that once these things go mainstream, companies with values that rely on trust as a core element of collaboration instead of surveillance will gain an advantage in the job market. I hope I'm right

<comment><USER25> My guess is that most people will happily (or not so happily) trade salary and job stability for surveillance. Modern corporations are basically authoritarian so the trend towards total surveillance will increase in my view.

<comment><USER26> > job stability

i doubt it. surveillance means less stability as there are more reasons to fire people.

<comment><USER27> Or maybe more reasons not to fire? If you know someone's whole life maybe you'll be more understanding. Or is that too optimistic?

<comment><USER28> This assumes that somebody actually cares, if they do, they would know that already by asking.

<comment><USER29> That assumes they can trust the answer.

<comment><USER28> This heavily depends on the environment and the culture of a company | department. In my experience, managers that actually do care about their employees tend to have much better results than the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm increasingly of the view that increases in communications technology, at the social scale, _undermine_ trust.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communi...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6jqakv/communications_advances_undermine_trust/)

Of course, Shoshana Zuboff beat me, and very nearly everyone else, to this in the 1970s:

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-age-of-smart- machine-t...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-age-of-smart-machine-the- future-of-work-and-power/oclc/475660893)

(Her work began in the 1970s, though the book was published in 1984.)

Zuboff's laws:

1\. Everything that can be automated will be automated.

2\. Everything that can be informated will be informated.

3\. Every digital application that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control.

</comment><comment><USER31> A company I used to work for once tried to measure the productivity of developers by having a visible dashboard with each developer's amount of lines of code written (or rather lines of code committed to our Git repo). Anyone that knows anything about programming could tell you that quantity of code means nothing in terms of productivity and likely will make the worst programmers look best as a bad programmer will likely reinvent the wheel every chance they get thus having more lines of code that a good programmer.

Also, this company would repeatedly under-scope projects, go over budget and over the deadline in the design process, and then blame it all on developers when the project was behind schedule and over budget.

</comment><comment><USER32> My employer monitors tap in, tap out and break times too. It started with a "good intention" from the HR and middle management started exploiting it in no time.

Background:

There was a lot of new about a year or two ago how the Japanese government was starting to take initiatives to reduce the overtime culture here in Japan. We always had to tap in our security cards to enter the building and perhaps the timings were always recorded for security concerns. But, the HR announced that in an effort to reduce overtime culture, these times will be automatically entered in the attendance system and your boss would be notified if you worked for 8 hours or more. "Ideally" the boss should then reprimand you and overtime, we would become overtime-free culture to work in.

What really happened:

While there were emails being sent for every employee working more than 8 hours, the manager would just approve it. There was no practical use of the new system and nothing improved. Rather, my managers started getting access to all this data they never had direct access to before. Colleagues were being sent emails if their break times exceeded 5 minutes more than the stipulated 1 hour. Same for coming in at 9:04 instead of 9:00. When a colleague back lashed, upper management threatened him by telling him they could also dig up his PC on/off/sleeptimes etc to give him significant paycuts.

The work culture was never worse.

</comment><comment><USER33> I started out in the IT industry as the sole tech support guy for an ISP in Oklahoma City in 1995. I eventually built it into a department of about 20 people answering phones and emails, then I eventually moved into sysadmin.

It was great when the goal was "solve the customer's problems and get them online".

When they hired an official "Customer Support Manager", it started being all about metrics and went downhill. "How many calls are you taking an hour" vs "how many problems did you solve".

I hear that one of the large hosting providers here in town even does screenshots of everyone's desktops every 30 seconds to a minute. That's insane. My employer, on the other hand, doesn't care what you're doing in another window as long as it's not illegal and you get your job done.

</comment><comment><USER18> > "You may never want to be chipped but if you're a millennial, you have no > problems. They think it's cool."

If that's true to any appreciable degree, that really makes my generation the biggest sellouts there ever were.

<comment><USER34> Luckily I've seen no evidence to support that claim other than the word of a man trying to sell microchipping services.

If anything it's the people around me in their 40s and 50s who are most cavalier about constantly sharing their location and activities with the world ala Facebook checkins.

<comment><USER35> It's rampant in the young as well, but they're just doing it in circles you aren't a part of, on apps you don't use or haven't heard of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Many years ago I was working on "electronic performance support" tools for call center operators at a large retail financial services organization, and someone proposed we install software on every worker's computer that measured idle time, keystrokes, etc.

I was vehemently opposed to this on simple grounds -- we already measured everything about the workers' performance that mattered to the organization's bottom line (customer satisfaction, productivity, etc.) -- what did we care _how_ they achieved their results? Measuring the wrong things is a total waste of time and effort. It's a distraction.

Oh yeah, and it's hideous and creepy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reminds me of this excellent short story called Manna[1]

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

</comment><comment><USER38> > In February, it was reported that Amazon had been granted patents for a > wristband that ... could "read" their hand movements, buzzing or emitting a > pulse to alert them when they were reaching for the wrong item.

Setting aside the privacy violations of the rest of the article, this part is really depressing for me. I'm reminded of an episode of Mind Field [1] where they steer live cockroaches through a mobile app by connecting a chip to its antennae - the potential application being scouting of buildings, since it's cheaper to use a live cockroach than build a tiny robot.

This to me feels like Amazon are working towards a fully robotic factory worker - they have all the smarts done in software, but for now they need to use a human for the body. Could you imagine how dehumanizing it would feel to be the body of a robot?

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXNGvDdkXZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXNGvDdkXZE) (YouTube Red subscription required, unfortunately)

</comment><comment><USER39> Besides the obvious ethical problems, I don't why companies are worried about inducing stupid cognitive overhead with this. Employees will obviously change their behavior in response, and that will require nontrivial mental energy.

<comment><USER40> What cognitive overhead, exactly?

<comment><USER30> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon)

<comment><USER40> ...care to elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> this is tangential, but: the chips mentioned in the first section of the article are simple RFID tags, similar to the chip a vet might implant in your pet cat. they aren't GPS receivers, they aren't internet-connected, they don't even have a battery. they just store a key which is insignificant without the context of a larger system. i've seriously considering getting one of my own (to pair with smart locks or my car's ignition). i'm very privacy-conscious when it comes to technology, and people who know me are always shocked to hear me express interest.

there's a lot of unwarranted FUD surrounding implantable RFID.

<comment><USER42> On that note though, while you up the convienence, you also lower the security. Passive RFID can only broadcast a number; there's no compute to adhere to any sort of security protocol that is resistant to replay attacks. Meaning anyone with a reader that passes close enough to you will have the keys to your house.

<comment><USER43> > _Passive RFID can only broadcast a number_

Nope, not anymore. Current UHF RFID tags are able to store enough charge from the RF signal from the reader to have a half-duplex conversation with the reader and do small amounts of computation. See [https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso- iec:18000:-63:ed-2:v...](https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso- iec:18000:-63:ed-2:v1:en)

<comment><USER42> Cool! Has anyone shown that a subdermal sized RFID chip is able to adhere to that? Further, does any RFID chip on the market have a real security story? Ideally you'd have public/private key encryption with some programmability on the part of both the readers and the chips themselves (so readers can be told "here's the public key of ID#1234, so only trust that you've seen 1234 if you get something decryptable with this key", so they can't be easily spoofed, and RFID chips can be told "here's the public key of the reader(s) you should respond to; anyone else ignore").

Until that happens, I just don't see it being secure.

<comment><USER43> > _Further, does any RFID chip on the market have a real security story?_

A few minutes of Googling would have told you that, yes, such things already exist and have for a while. Slap one into a implantable tag and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The disappointing part is that these practices can easily become standard. It's a race to the bottom like sharing SSN numbers with employers, which should have never been an acceptable practice, but people will "undercut" each other.

</comment><comment><USER45> Every single business has associations, lobbies and industry groups.

The power of collective bargaining it seems is understood with clarity everywhere in business. Except when it comes to labour suddenly the waters become muddied.

Propaganda against organizing and unions remain at the level of one bad restaurant or bank discrediting the entire idea of restaurants and banks and people with IQ see this as credible. Yet without collective action it is impossible to stop this kind of creep.

Capitalism and free markets is all about choice but working and a job is not a choice for most people. Surviving is a compulsion not a choice. True choice includes the choice not to do something which is where the economic power of choice comes from.

If all companies in a race to the bottom adopt these practices what choice does labour have and them being forced to accepting these conditions is anything but meaningful 'choice'. It's coercion.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't understand why these articles always mention the ability of a company to monitor what websites you're on as a new thing, considering that's essentially been built in to the average network setup since the 80s; ditto with working at home if you used a company laptop or VPNed in

</comment><comment><USER47> my employer keylogs all computers and does sentiment analysis.

<comment><USER48> If that's true, what do they do with that information?

<comment><USER49> cat keylog_data_of_200k_employees > /dev/null

Seriously any company doing this is not competent enough to do any kind of meaningful analysis on data of that scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> paranoia.

</comment><comment><USER51> Anne Applebaum's "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956" documents the process of imposing authoritarianism. Particularly important is the combination of surveillance and the threat of violence. You can't have a thug with a baton on every street corner, but with enough information, you can credibly extend the threat of violence far beyond the number of thugs available. The number of nodes in a tree grows much faster than its depth.

How should we compare this kind of upstream oppression--heading off free expression, movement, association before they happen--with more localized forms of assault? More concretely, what should we make of the software developers, designers, salespeople, and managers who collaborate in building these kinds of systems?

<comment><USER25> I don't even want to consider how the world would look if Stalin or the Nazis had had current technology. I think they would have succeeded.

<comment><USER52> There are a lot of people right now who want to stifle free speech. "Have a different opinion, that's abuse - or a beating". While not restricted to antifa, there seems lately a surge of "little Stalinists", who seem intent to crush or silence any dissenting opinion.

In short, history repeats itself, and "experience is recognising a mistake the second time you've made it."

<comment><USER16> I like that "antifa" just gets sliced in there, ignoring that the phrase and meaning is explicitly "anti-fascist", and it's only gained renewed visibility because there are _actual_ fascists openly demonstrating and threatening people in the US.

You've always had a right to free speech, you sure as hell have never had a right not to be criticized for what you say.

<comment><USER53> > you sure as hell have never had a right not to be criticized for what you > say.

I think that _this_ is insufficiently emphasized.

Personally, I think what's even more importantly forgotten and has led to the rather ridiculous situation on college campuses[1] is that there is _no right not to be offended_. I would even go so far as to say that such a right would be the _opposite_ of freedom of speech.

[1] e.g. trigger warnings

<comment><USER16> Trigger warnings are about not acting like a jackass to people. And the angry response to those who cavaliery show a disregard for the feelings of others are just as valid if you want to go down that path.

<comment><USER53> If I understand correctly, you're supporting my point.

Free speech is very much about allowing someone to act like a jackass (or worse!) to people with words and ideas.

It doesn't protect those speakers from the repercussions.

Trigger warnings aren't repercussions, however. They're prior restraint, and that's a no-no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What's with the U.S.'s obsession with efficiency? Life is much more than that. So what if your employees are not working at full efficiency? I doubt a lot of these execs work without taking breaks.

<comment><USER55> The sole ethic of a corporation is increased production, profits, and value for the shareholders.

This myopic view is the religion of capitalism.

<comment><USER23> _This myopic view is the religion of capitalism._

There are plenty of capitalists who don't support this kind of degrading, dehumanizing shit. And for that matter, capitalism doesn't even require corporations at all. It would be more fair to say:

"This myopic view is a disease that infects some organizations in a capitalist economy".

The question is, how do we eradicate the disease without killing the host(s)?

<comment><USER56> The issue is that companies carrying the disease often grow and "prosper" while companies which do not get left in the dust. Thus the trend goes towards every company becoming diseased.

The only way to solve this is regulation. If you don't impose non-negotiable standards on everybody, the ones most willing to bend laws and morals succeed.

<comment><USER23> _The issue is that companies carrying the disease often grow and "prosper" while companies which do not get left in the dust._

I'm sure that happens sometimes, but I don't think it's been demonstrated - not do I think it's true - that companies prosper _because_ they do this kind of stuff. In fact, I'd argue that it's actually self-defeating over a sufficiently long time-scale.

And this is where we, as a community of hackers, need to put energy into doing the "stuff" that makes that sort of behavior self-defeating. We need to be the ones figuring out more clever ways to decentralize things and use all this cool tech we've created to allow individuals greater autonomy, and more ability to proper without requiring the trappings of the big enterprise.

If Coase[1] was right[2], then the main reason "firms" exist is to reduce transaction costs. So the question becomes - how can we use tech to make reduce those same transaction costs, allowing smaller firms (down to the level of the individual, ideally) to proper just as well, without needing to build some byzantine, bureaucratic, behemoth?

 _The only way to solve this is regulation._

Regulation is just another disease, which is arguably a more dangerous variation of the first. Regulation leads to regulatory capture, franchise agreements, taxpayer subsidized firms that can out compete the unsubsidized ones, ginormous military/industrial contracts, the F-35 debacle, Navy destroyers running Windows, all manners of corruption and artificial monopolies, etc.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm)

<comment><USER54> Very insightful comment. Some thoughts:

> I don't think it's been demonstrated - not do I think it's true - <USER2> > companies prosper because they do this kind of stuff

I don't think it's _because_ of this always, but it's certainly an advantage for companies that do.

> I'd argue that it's actually self-defeating over a sufficiently long time- > scale

How long though, and how many people will have suffered by then? I mean, polluting the environment is self-defeating over a sufficiently long term, but we don't want to let this self-regulation happen because it will come with extinction. We should strive for things being fixed sooner rather than later.

> We need to be the ones figuring out more clever ways to decentralize things > and use all this cool tech we've created to allow individuals greater > autonomy, and more ability to proper without requiring the trappings of the > big enterprise.

I agree 100%.

> If Coase[1] was right[2], then the main reason "firms" exist is to reduce > transaction costs.

Oh, thanks for the link. I don't know enough about this to comment.

> Regulation is just another disease, which is arguably a more dangerous > variation of the first.

Regulation refers to a setting rules. It's dangerous because the state is powerful, but it can also exist devoid of private interests for this reason. Like the FDA ensuring food is safe, or urban planning ensuring all buildings get water, electricity and other basic services.

> Regulation leads to regulatory capture,

Like running leads to injuries; I mean, if done wrong things will fail.

> franchise agreements,

These sound like regulatory capture.

> taxpayer subsidized firms that can out compete the unsubsidized ones,

Is this necessarily wrong? Subsidized fire departments and public libraries certainly out-perform unsubsidized ones. On certain industries subsidies might not make sense, but if it's an industry where a business model is hard to maintain (like a fire department) then why oppose it? Part of the reason regulation exists is to avoid market failure; sometimes private actors don't suffice.

> ginormous military/industrial contracts, the F-35 debacle, Navy destroyers > running Windows

This sounds like government doing business poorly, not like government setting rules for better management and avoiding market failure.

> all manners of corruption and artificial monopolies, etc.

Well, if you have a corrupt government then yeah. There's instances of regulation done well too, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Who are the programmers writing this stuff? People even Facebook found too sleazy?

</comment><comment><USER58> I only just skimmmed the article, but a helluvalot more employers need to be monitoring emotions. In fact if no matter who you are, I bet you would do well to immediately agree to take a 20% pay cut starting at the end of reading this paragraph (I know I would) in exchange for nothing more than the sure knowledge that soon, somehow your employer will start monitoring your emotions.

Also by the by your dating life will improve by 500% if you do nothing else than start monitoring your date's emotions better than however you're doing it now. It's the single best thing you can do to start managing literally anyone and anything, including yourself. Do you know how you feel now? I bet until I asked you, you didn't, and now that I did, I bet you realize you're procrastinating doing something. (Not necessarily true, you could be taking a break for a few minutes.)

<comment><USER59> Emotions are extremely complex, and the thought that _anyone_ can easily turn "monitoring emotions" into actionable data is laughably wrong.

/Acknowledging/ emotions may be much more useful, in case that's more along the lines of what you meant...

<comment><USER58> You're right and making those things actionable isn't trivial. but even trying to do so is a good start.</comment></comment></comment>


Kim Dotcom Must Be Allowed To See FBI Evidence Against Him, Court Rules - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-must-be-allowed-to-see-fbi-evidence-against-him-court-rules-120816/

<comment><USER2> What kind of trial would that be where you're not allowed to see evidence against you? "We know you're guilty. Just trust us".

I'm baffled by some of FBI's comments and actions lately. Either their current leadership is incompetent or plain malicious, with no regard for Constitution/law, or more importantly the _spirit_ of the law. Because using weird technicalities to get someone is pretty malicious I think.</comment>