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Watch what you say in Silicon Valley coffee shops


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2018 Mar 16, 10:33pm   2,959 views  9 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

One day last year, John Evans (not his real name) received a message from his manager at Facebook telling him he was in line for a promotion. When they met the following day, she led him down a hallway praising his performance. However, when she opened the door to a meeting room, he came face to face with members of Facebook’s secretive “rat-catching” team, led by the company’s head of investigations, Sonya Ahuja.

The interrogation was a technicality; they already knew he was guilty of leaking some innocuous information to the press. They had records of a screenshot he’d taken, links he had clicked or hovered over, and they strongly indicated they had accessed chats between him and the journalist, dating back to before he joined the company.

“It’s horrifying how much they know,” he told the Guardian, on the condition of anonymity.
...
Companies will also hire external agencies to surveil their staff. One such firm, Pinkerton, counts Google and Facebook among its clients.

Among other services, Pinkerton offers to send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company’s campus to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations.


https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-valley-internal-work-spying-surveillance-leakers

And I would bet that the Pinkerton spies know exactly where to locate the employee, via the employee's cellphone.

Comments 1 - 9 of 9        Search these comments

1   MisdemeanorRebel   2018 Mar 16, 11:09pm  

Ha, y'all remember back in the 80s and 90s when the Internet was gonna be all liberating and bring in Galt's Gulch?

When every other Geocities site was like "If we don't have Freedom now, we're gonna make the internet go dark and build a floating city on the sea."

Now those assholes are in Silly Con Valley Middle management, thinking of new ways to manipulate your information.

Just like it seems a good chunk of the guys who were like "911 was an inside job" in 2004 then were Gold Nuts in 2008 and then "Go Ron Paul" in 2012 are now like "Hitler dindu nuttin' wrong." (Not All, but definitely more than a few.)
3   Ceffer   2018 Mar 16, 11:40pm  

As is suggested by the media, these big, successful internet companies start operating on fumes and fear that things might not last, and become cult-like, with bizarre editorializing of personalities, stratification, company speak, conformity, and "rules" that you only learn by violating them and getting "punished".

"The Circle" was a mediocre movie, but Tom Hanks played a pretty good role of the SV visionary preaching joy and information freedom in public but selling out the gullible into giving up their privacy for profit, manipulation, and government surveillance.
4   Booger   2018 Mar 17, 5:05am  

How the fuck do they know when you have done a screen shot?
5   HeadSet   2018 Mar 17, 8:58am  

Booger says
How the fuck do they know when you have done a screen shot?


Maybe you are thinking of someone taking a "screenshot" by pointing a smart phone or camera at the computer screen. Surely you are aware that the screenshot Alt-PrtScn style can be recorded by any number of spyware apps.
6   Patrick   2018 Mar 17, 11:20am  

I've had at least two experiences where I proved to myself that my employer was reading my email or Slack chats.

In one case, years ago, I actually got a raise by sending myself a faked job offer by email apparently from a rival company. (It's easy to fake the origin of emails.) My own company matched it.

I worked at a small company that got bought by Intel, and Intel required us to install an app on our phone to do two-factor authentication (password and a code from the app) in order to get into the systems to do our job. The disturbing part was that the app demanded to have all permissions on the phone, including location. So Intel had my location at all times. Hated that.
7   GNL   2018 Mar 17, 12:53pm  

Patrick says
I've had at least two experiences where I proved to myself that my employer was reading my email or Slack chats.

In one case, years ago, I actually got a raise by sending myself a faked job offer by email apparently from a rival company. (It's easy to fake the origin of emails.) My own company matched it.

I worked at a small company that got bought by Intel, and Intel required us to install an app on our phone to do two-factor authentication (password and a code from the app) in order to get into the systems to do our job. The disturbing part was that the app demanded to have all permissions on the phone, including location. So Intel had my location at all times. Hated that.

Get 2 phones.
8   GNL   2018 Mar 17, 1:34pm  

WineHorror1 says
In one case, years ago, I actually got a raise by sending myself a faked job offer by email apparently from a rival company. (It's easy to fake the origin of emails.) My own company matched it.

Damn, I wish I was that smart. Great trick.
9   Booger   2018 Mar 17, 6:28pm  

Patrick says
In one case, years ago, I actually got a raise by sending myself a faked job offer by email apparently from a rival company. (It's easy to fake the origin of emails.) My own company matched it.


How much of a raise?

Was this job offer emailed to your home, or work email?

How big of a company?

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