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Endemic Surveillance Micro-Societies

Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software - Times Online

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.

The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.

The old question - "who watches the watchers?" comes to mind.

How will monitoring "heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure" help produce a better and more productive workforce?

Worse still - could the manipulation of these parameters within the software of this new "Working Police" be used to make a more compliant (but less productive) work-force ??

Either way - very soon we all will learn to chant "I Love Big Brother, I Love Big Brother" - because the software that records all this will let "Big Brother" (or even "Little Brother") know when we are telling the truth or not ..

The implications of this kind of monitoring are too vast to explore in one post - but right now I would expect an upsurge in colleges that teach Zen Buddhist meditational techniques to enable workers to hide their real feelings and hack the system ...

Now repeat after me "I love little brother, I love little brother" ...


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