小心点，打工人——你的老板正在盯着你
职场圆形监狱
小心点，打工人。你的老板正在盯着你。
Workplace surveillance is nothing new. The dark Satanic mills of 18th-to crack the whip. Shops have long used CCTV to monitorcentury Britain had
supervisors to crack the whip. Shops have long used CCTV to monitor customers and staff, and some factory and warehouse workers have had to face the humiliation of timed toilet breaks. Still, if you enjoy the comfort of a white-collar job, you may be stunned to learn just how much you are being watched.
职场监视并不是什么新鲜事。在18 世纪英国黑暗的撒旦磨坊里，有主管鞭打鞭子来监视工人。商店长期使用闭路电视监控系统来监视顾客和员工，而一些工厂和仓库工人不得不遭受限时如厕的羞辱。除此之外，如果你在享受白领工作的舒适，你也可能会惊讶自己被监视的程度。
Calls and emails are monitored using ever more advanced software. Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the snooping to new levels, tracking everything from Zoom-call rictus and twitchy keyboard strokes to the consistent note of irritation in your voice, in an attempt to assess your productivity and judge
your state of mind.
电话和电子邮件正在被更先进的软件进行监视。在人工智能（AI）的帮助下，窥探被提高到了新的高度，它会追踪你的所有信息，从你进行Zoom电话会议时龇牙咧嘴的表情、敲击键盘时的焦虑，到你声音里持续的愤怒，并试图以此来评估你的工作效率和精神状态。
Surveillance is rising because work-from-home policies mean that employers are keen to keep tabs on their remote workforce. Before the pandemic, around one in ten of the large businesses asked by Gartner, a research firm, had spying software. Within three years it expects the share to reach 70%.
监视正在变多，因为在家办公就意味着雇主要密切监视其不在公司的员工。在新冠肺炎流行之前，接受研究咨询公司高德纳（Gartner）调查的大型公司中，约十分之一的公司使用了间谍软件。并预计在三年内，该比例会高达70%。
Bosses also have ever-expanding amounts of data at their disposal, enlarging the digital footprint that can be monitored. Widely used software such as
Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams or Slack can tell managers what time you clock in or how many calls you join on their platforms. Employee badges
fitted with motion sensors and microphones can alert bosses if someone is loafing about. The blurring boundaries between work and home mean that
video surveillance and other intrusive tools are barging into workers’ personal lives, social-media accounts and private devices at all times of the day.
知道你什么时候打卡、在这些平台上参加了多少会话。配有运动传感器和麦克风的员工徽章会在你摸鱼时提醒老板。工作和家庭之间的界限越来越模糊，这意味着视频监控和其他窥探工具无时无刻不在潜入员工的个人生活、社交媒体账户和私人设备。
The law is scrambling to adjust. In the state of New York employees subject to electronic monitoring must be told in advance, under a new law introduced on May 7th. Connecticut and Delaware require similar disclosures. California is considering new laws to strengthen privacy protections for workers,
including a ban on digital monitoring without prior notice. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation establishes some basic rights for
staff. Yet it is still early days and the technology is advancing fast. As a result, most firms are only just getting their heads around how much remote work is likely to remain permanent. A clear boundary between embracing new technologies on the one hand, and protecting workers on the other, has still to
be drawn.
相关法律正在匆忙进行调整。根据纽约州5月7日出台的一项新法律，受到电子监控的员工必须被提前告知。康涅狄格州（Connecticut）和特拉华州（Delaware）也要求进行类似的告知。加利福尼亚州（California）正在考虑制定新法律以加强对员工隐私的保护，包括禁止在未通知的情况下使用数字监控。欧盟的《通用数据保护条例》规定了员工的一些基本权利。然而，法律刚起步，科技却在快速发展。因此，大多数公司只是在想办法弄清楚有多少工作会一直远程进行。一方面要拥抱新技术，另一方面要保护员工，这两者之间的界限仍待划定。
There are perfectly legitimate reasons for surveillance at work. Many jobs require monitoring for safety, security and compliance. Investment banks’ traders are tracked to prevent insider dealing, and the decisions of social-media moderators are traced and recorded to ensure consistency and accountability.
In the same way that companies collect data on customers’ behaviour in order to improve their products, so professional employers are using monitoring tools to measure the productivity and engagement of their most important resource: their people. In the future such tools could help spot bad posture, root out bullying, and identify and share best practice among staff.
但在工作中进行监视有完全正当的理由。许多工作都需要监控以保证安全性、保密性和合规性。通过监控投资银行的交易员来防止内幕交易，跟踪和记录社交媒体版主的决定以确保工作协调性、便于问责。与公司收集客户行为数据以改进产品的方式相同，专业的雇主正在使用监视工具来衡量员工的生产力和参与度，而员工是雇主拥有的最重要的资源。将来，此类工具可以用来捕捉不良态势，根除欺凌行为，判别出员工最优表现并进行分享学习。
Yet it is easy to see the pitfalls. There is a long history of those with power abusing those without in the name of compliance and efficiency. In the most
extreme cases, 20th-century despots ran vast informant networks, and some slave plantations in America and the West Indies
kept tyrannical work records.
然而，其缺陷也显而易见。掌权者以符合规定和为了保证效率的名义滥用权力，这一现象由来已久。甚至最极端的情况也出现过——20世纪的暴君拥有庞大的线人网络，美国和西印度群岛的一些奴隶种植园中也曾暴虐地对待其中的奴隶工人。
显然，如今的员工并不是种植园中的契约奴。但许多研究表明，对员工个人进行过度监控可能会导致更大的压力。若算法使用有偏见的数据进行训练，再使用这些算法来制定更多决策，那么出现歧视的可能性会增大。一项分析发现AI系统始终认为黑色面孔看起来比白色面孔更愤怒。
What to do? As law and practice evolve, some principles should govern workplace surveillance. Individuals must be fully informed, as the New York law
provides. Some firms now disclose monitoring methods in the fine print of their employee handbooks, and specify what data managers have access to.
But that is no substitute for consistent, easily understood information for staff—so they can decide how to behave at work,
and whom they choose to work for.
那应该怎么办？随着法律和实践的不断发展完善，职场监视应当遵循更多原则。正如纽约州的法律规定，员工个人必须充分了解情况。现在一些公司在员工手册的细则中说明了监视方法，并且详细说明了经理有权访问的数据有哪些。但公司仍有必要为员工提供一致和易于理解的信息——从而员工可以决定在工作中如何表现、为谁工作。
Employers should have a legitimate reason for surveillance. Although the boundary will take time to establish through case law and precedent, this is vital to ensure that monitoring is proportionate. Firms should not have access to employees’ private devices, provided they are not used for work. And
significant decisions made by algorithms should be subject to appeal and review by human beings. Establishing clear guidelines is not easy, but qualms
over the potential abuse of surveillance will grow. It’s time to start drawing some lines.
雇主要想进行监视，需要有正当理由。尽管通过判例法和先例来确定允许监控的边界需要时间，但这对于进行适度监管至关重要。如果员工不用私人设备办公的话，公司则无权访问这些设备。通过算法所做出的重大决策应该接受人工申诉和审查。制定明确的指导方案并不容易，但监控的确存在被滥用的可能，而且针对这一点的疑虑将会增加。是时候开始定些规矩了。
本文引自经济学人，仅供外语爱好者学习交流，不作他用。
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