#NFC apps

[techniktagebuch]

Sommer 2024

StrandJetzt

In der App kann ich mir anzeigen lassen, welche Strandkörbe noch frei sind, die App heißt “BeachNow”, und schon der Name.

Dann kann ich direkt den mit dem schönsten Blick aufs Wasser buchen.

In der Tourist-Info könnte man nur einen ungefähren Standpunkt der Körbe bei der Buchung erfragen. Ob er weiter oben oder direkt am Wasser steht, weiß man dort nicht.

Für die Buchung also App runterladen, “BeachNow” ohne Leerzeichen, mit zwei Tipps mit meinem Google-Konto verbinden. Zahlungsdaten werden auch direkt aus Google übernommen. Es ist erstaunlich, wie einfach und funktional Apps sein können. Mit wenigen weiteren Tipps ist der am schönsten aussehende Strandkorb gebucht, sein digitales Schloss mit meinem Handy verbunden und lässt sich direkt in der App öffnen.

Etwas später gehe ich doch noch bei der Tourist-Info vorbei und lasse mir auch noch einen separaten Chip für den Korb geben, damit die Kinder den benutzen und unabhängig von meinem Handy und mir zum Strandkorb gehen und ihre Badesachen da raus holen können.

Sehr zufrieden mit der Gesamtsituation.

(Molinarius)

[warumichradfahre]

High Tech beim Fahrradschloss: Interview mit Norman Eifler von der Firma Serea

Neuheiten gibt es auf der Cyclingworld viele. So viele, dass ich mir einige aussuchen muss, um hier darüber zu berichten. Und hier ist eine, die mich besonders angemacht hat. Was genau das ist, darüber habe ich mit Norman Eifler von der Firma Seria gesprochen. Axel: Jetzt stehe ich hier gerade am Eingang der Halle zum Wasserturm und habe ein interessantes Produkt der Firma Serea entdeckt. Und…

[taptofan]

线下活动也能接收推送通知吗？🤔

说到线下活动，很多人第一反应是横幅、传单、现场广播等传统宣传方式。但其实，现在已经可以通过手机推送通知在活动现场实时传递信息，让活动营销更加便捷和高效。下面就来看看具体是怎么做到的吧！ 1. 线下也能接收推送通知吗？📱 很多人会认为，必须访问网站才能订阅推送通知。然而，通过NFC 标牌或二维码，即使在线下场景中，也能轻松完成推送订阅，省去了安装 App 或复杂注册的麻烦。 只要用手机轻触 NFC 标牌，或扫描二维码，就能跳转到订阅页面，一键完成订阅。 过程简单快捷，活动参与者更愿意尝试。 2. 具体如何实现？🔑 NFC 标牌 在活动场地放置NFC 标牌，只要将手机靠近标牌，就能打开订阅页面。 无需输入网址，也无需繁琐的注册流程，一触即达。 二维码 如果手机不支持 NFC…

[syeda122003]

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[wedowebapps]

Top NFC Payment Apps: Guide to Secure and Contactless Pay

Introduction Just in the last years, there has been an increasing number of mobile app payments that have revolutionized the way we make transactions. Now, paying for groceries or even public transportation is made so convenient with just one tap of your mobile phone. This seasmic shift toward contactless payments has created an essential part of our everyday life with NFC payment mobile apps,…

[newspatron]

15 Amazing iOS 18.1 Features You Won't Believe!

What's your favorite new iOS 18.1 feature? Share your thoughts and join the discussion on our Newspatron forums!

Apple’s iOS 18.1 is here, and it’s packed with goodies! Think Magic Erasers, Siri makeovers, and email summaries that’ll make you wonder how you ever lived without them. We’re diving deep into 15 game-changing iOS 18.1 Features that’ll have you hitting that update button faster than you can say “Siri, what’s new?” Oh, and don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel for some awesome drone…

[saggiosguardo]

iOS e il Digital Markets Act: i cambiamenti dalla A alla Z (o quasi)

Se ne parlerà per parecchio tempo a venire, sicuramente anche dopo la data chiave del 7 marzo. Quello sarà il giorno da cui Apple dovrà conformarsi ufficialmente al Digital Markets Act dell’Unione Europea – un conto alla rovescia iniziato a settembre 2023, quando il gigante di Cupertino è rientrato nel novero dei gatekeeper, ovvero quelle aziende tech che per determinati motivi Bruxelles ritiene…

[techniktagebuch]

2024

eID für Kundenportal der Deutschen Rentenversicherung

Dass die Ausweisapp2 ausgerechnet in der Version 2.0 in Ausweisapp umbenannt wurde, hat für viel Spott gesorgt. Andererseits achte ich jetzt doch öfter mal darauf, wo ich meinen Personalausweis zum Login verwenden kann.

Ein Service ist die Lückenauskunft der Deutschen Rentenversicherung. Damit kann man feststellen, zu welchen Lebensabschnitten der Versicherung keine Informationen vorliegen. Das kann einen Einfluss auf die Höhe der Rente haben.

Zum Einloggen benötige ich die Ausweis App auf meinen iPhone und auf meinem Mac. Die App muss auf beiden Geräten gestartet sein. Zunächst muss die Transport PIN mit Hilfe der App auf dem iPhone auf die selbstgewählte PIN geändert werden. Die Transport PIN bekommt man mit der Karte als Schriftstück ausgehändigt.

Dann muss man die Verbindung zwischen Ausweisapp auf dem iPhone aus Kartenlesen für die Ausweisapp auf dem Mac einrichten. Dazu müssen beide Geräte im selben WLAN sein.

1. Der Anmeldungsbutton im Browser leitet einen zur Ausweisapp weiter. Dort kann man bestätigen. 2. Dort prüft man, wer den Ausweis auslesen möchte, bestätigt und wird zur Lesefunktion weitergeleitet. 3. Wechsel zum iPhone, dort gibt man die Kartenlesefunktion frei. 4. Die NFC Scan Funktion muss freigegeben werden. 5. Die PIN wird benötigt. Auf der Mac AusweisApp wird man parallel darauf verwiesen, auf die Hinweise auf der iPhone App zu achten.

Zack ist man eingeloggt und kann die Lückenauskunft runterladen.

Den Antrag, um die Lücken zu füllen, kann man dann auch gleich über das Kundenportal stellen. Es ist sogar möglich, mit der Behörde über das ePostfach zu kommunizieren.

(helmer)

[senseoriginal]

Experience genuine shopping with Sense Original: Defending Your Steps Against Duplicate Shoes

Duplicate shoes not only undermine your style but also pose risks to foot health. Substandard materials can cause allergies, discomfort, and long-term foot issues. Say no to counterfeits; choose authenticity. Tap on product with Sense Original app, our innovative app, leveraging NFC technology, allows users to authenticate their shoes seamlessly. Uncover every detail, from material quality to production origins, ensuring an unparalleled, genuine walking experience.

[taptofan]

Can You Receive Push Notifications at Offline Events? 🤔

When you think of offline events, you usually imagine banners, flyers, and on-site announcements. But did you know you can use push notifications on smartphones to deliver real-time updates even at an offline venue? This approach is not only convenient but also highly effective for marketing and communication. Let’s find out how! 1. Is It Really Possible to Get Push Notifications Offline?…

[bynux]

Be Careful Putting Your Phone Down At Panera Bread Locations

I noticed my phone buzzing repeatedly when I'd have it open on the table at Panera, and on further review I realized that my phone was repeatedly scanning an NFC tag on the underside of the table. I'm assuming the servers use these as a shorthand way of confirming that food has been delivered to the correct table.

This is all well and good; this is a prime use case for NFC tags, and using an NFC reader app I was able to see that they're just basic numeric codes. As long as the tags aren't rewritable by anyone, they're not a security risk.

The NFC tags at Panera Bread are rewritable. Like, easily. Using a simple app you can get from the Google Play Store.

What this means is that someone can rewrite the NFC tags to redirect to a download link for malware, or a phishing website, or any number of other attack vectors.

I have more information about this issue on my personal website, as well as a video demonstrating the effect. My recommendation is to keep NFC turned off on your phone unless and until you're actively using it (for touchless payments, bus tickets, etc.).

[darkmedolie]

Hellooo x3! I’d like to start customizing my Tamagotchi, but I also want to add custom backgrounds and scenes. Which Tamagotchi can do that, and how can I make them?

If you want fully customize a character, you have

•The 4u and 4u+

you need:

- a phone compatible with felica nfc to send the files to the tama. (You can find a list of compatible phones on the page of the fan app at the bottom)

-the fan made 4u app by Mr blinky

-The tools programs by Mr blinky (at the bottom of this page use the links to download, the 4u dl pack, tamaimageeditor, 4u data editor

To edit characters take a characters file in the dl pack and open it in tama image editor

There you can copy a frame (right click the image) and paste it into your art program of choice to edit, once done you copy paste it back in the editor and voilà,

Do the same for an item you want to evolve your character with

For the character data, you save your file and open it in data editor you can custom all of their info there, from birthday date to gender, to dialog lines, to favorite food, also make sure that the transformation item ID and name are correct in the data file, it's very important!

Once done save your file upload both the character and the related item to mr blinky site and you will get codes to download then on the app! Now you just have to send them to your tamagotchi

(For info it's the same process for background, you just don't have to edit the data besides the name and id)

• tamagotchi smart

On tama smart you have to edit the Tamasmacard file and copy it onto a smacard (or a compatible substitute )

You can change all the art (and text and some data if you use the smarty pants program)

Each smart card have 4 background, so you can download 4 custom background max at a time

I have made 2 videos where I ramble about smart editing so if that interests you you can listen to them ,

Just a warning, making the sprites for smart is much longer and tedious, ( a lot more frames and the body and faces are separated )

[pact-weapon]

Lesser-Known Android Features

Bump Phones to Share Blogs

This is for phones with NFC (and it has to be turned on). Open the app and go to a blog, touch your phone to someone else’s, and that blog will open on their screen.

Scary, imagine this happening accidentally

[aloofraven]

I'm surprised at how quickly people jumped aboard the tap-to-pay with your phone once it became available in Norway. Because it is repeatedly less convenient than just using your card. I witness this every day as a cashier.

I don't use it myself, but I'm pretty sure it uses the NFC chip on your phone to work. The average phone owner doesn't know where(or what) it is. They just smack their phone onto the terminal and probably pray to God that it works quickly this time (I assume. I live in the Norwegian Bible Belt after all).

First attempt. A couple seconds pass. Nothing happens. Move the phone a few centimeters a way and try again.

Second attempt. Nothing happens. Move the phone much further away from the terminal.

Third attempt. Really shoving the screen hard right onto the terminal. A couple more seconds pass. Nothing happens.

Now the customer flips the phone back around to see why it doesn't work. Did they forget to activate the digital card? Did they exit the app? Did they shut off the screen? Did they forget to turn on mobile data? They troubleshoot for a short moment and try again. Probably cursing at God this time around.

Fourth attempt. Nothing happens still. Back up. Fingerprint scan.

Fifth attempt. Nothing happens still. Back up. Fingerprint scan.

Sixth attempt. Nothing happens still. Back up. Face scan.

Seventh attempt. Nothing happens still. Back up. Face scan.

Eighth attempt. Yet again nothing. Back up. Four number code.

Ninth attempt. A sound rings! The terminal beeps, or their phone chimes if their bank is fancy, and the transaction is complete. Finally it has worked! A grueling minute has finally passed! Their single 0.33L can of Pepsi has been paid for at last!

Sometimes a customer will give up after the third or fourth attempt and just fish out their card, which is already right there in the phone case(which combined with the card is likely blocking the NFC chip from the terminal), others take out their wallet which in itself is quite a rarity, some have to dig through their bags or backpacks to find their loose card floating around in there, they slap that thang on the terminal and it works immediately. No fuss as it has been for the last 10 years.

But sure, tap-to-pay with your phone is the newest and bestest thing in Convenience™

[techniktagebuch]

März 2025

Das Bezahlen ist wieder etwas schwieriger geworden

Wegen der Demilliardärisierung habe ich die neue Kreditkarte nicht mehr mit Google Pay verbunden und kann deshalb jetzt nicht mehr mit dem Handy kontaktlos bezahlen, wie ich es seit 2021 getan habe. Das ist etwas unpraktisch, ich war mit Aleks im letzten Monat mehrmals in Situationen, in denen wir eigentlich unterwegs einkaufen wollten, aber beide kein Portemonnaie und auch sonst kein Bargeld dabei hatten. Das Handy habe ich immer dabei, da war in den letzten vier Jahren keine Vorausplanung für Einkäufe erforderlich.

Ich kann nicht so richtig glauben, dass meine sonst so neumodische neue Bank-App nicht bereit ist, selbst mit der NFC-Funktion meines Handys zu reden. Das scheint viel schwieriger zu sein, als ich dachte. Alle paar Tage suche ich wieder danach, ob ich nicht doch nur was übersehen habe. In anderen Ländern (okay, in Schweden) scheinen die Banken das Bezahlen mit dem Handy direkt über ihre Bank-Apps möglich zu machen. Aber für mich gibt es nur Google Pay und sonst nichts.

Ich denke darüber nach, die Kreditkarte hinten in die Handyhülle zu stecken. Dann wäre wieder alles wie vorher, ich könnte das Handy an Bezahlterminals halten und hätte immer alles dabei. Aber die Vorstellung schreckt mich ab, dann beides auf einmal zu verlieren oder gestohlen zu bekommen.

Ich denke darüber nach, Bargeld hinten in die Handyhülle zu stecken. Aber daran müsste ich dann ja nach jedem Bezahlvorgang wieder denken, und es müsste immer die richtige Menge Geld sein, und überhaupt müsste ich dieses Bargeld erst mal beschaffen.

Es ist einer der wenigen Punkte, an denen durch die Demilliardärisierung tatsächlich etwas unpraktischer wird. Aber nur ein kleines bisschen. Früher – also vor 2021 – habe ich das mit dem Einkaufen ja auch irgendwie hinbekommen.

(Kathrin Passig)

[mariacallous]

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. “Nearly half of US employees admit to time theft!” “Biometric readers for enhanced accuracy!” “Offer staff benefits in a controlled way with Vending Machine Access!”

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.” Five years on from the pandemic, when the world showed how effectively many roles could be performed remotely or flexibly, what’s caused the sudden change of heart?

“There’s two things happening,” says global industry analyst Josh Bersin, who is based in California. “The economy is actually slowing down, so companies are hiring less. So there is a trend toward productivity in general, and then AI has forced virtually every company to reallocate resources toward AI projects.

“The expectation amongst CEOs is that’s going to eliminate a lot of jobs. A lot of these back-to-work mandates are due to frustration that both of those initiatives are hard to measure or hard to do when we don’t know what people are doing at home.”

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.

Track and Trace

The latest, deluxe end point of these time and attendance tchotchkes and apps is something like Austin-headquartered 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.

These technologies, and more sophisticated worker location- and behavior-tracking systems, are expanding from blue-collar jobs to pink-collar industries and even white-collar office settings. 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.

“Several of these earlier technologies, like RFID sensors and low-tech barcode scanners, have been used in manufacturing, in warehouses, or in other settings for some time,” says 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.”

What’s new, at least to the recent pandemic age of hybrid working, is the extent to which workers can now be tracked inside office buildings. 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.

The project breaks the tech down into two categories: The first is technology that tracks desk presence and room occupancy, and the second monitors the indoor location, movement, and behavior of the people working inside the building.

To start with desk and room occupancy, Spacewell offers a mix of motion sensors installed under desks, in ceilings, and at doorways in “office spaces” and heat sensors and low-resolution visual sensors to show which desks and rooms are being used. Both real-time and trend data are available to managers via its “live data floorplan,” and the sensors also capture temperature, environmental, light intensity, and humidity data.

The Swiss-headquartered Locatee, meanwhile, uses existing badge and device data via Wi-Fi and LAN to continuously monitor clocking in and clocking out, time spent by workers at desks and on specific floors, and the number of hours and days spent by employees at the office per week. While the software displays aggregate rather than individual personal employee data to company executives, the Cracked Labs report points out that Locatee offers a segmented team analytics report which “reveals data on small groups.”

As more companies return to the office, the interest in this idea of “optimized” working spaces is growing fast. According to S&S Insider’s early 2025 analysis, the connected office was worth $43 billion in 2023 and will grow to $122.5 billion by 2032. Alongside this, IndustryARC predicts there will be a $4.5 billion employee-monitoring-technology market, mostly in North America, by 2026—the only issue being that the crossover between the two is blurry at best.

At the end of January, Logitech showed off its millimeter-wave radar Spot sensors, which are designed to allow employers to monitor whether rooms are being used and which rooms in the building are used the most. A Logitech rep told The Verge that the peel-and-stick devices, which also monitor VOCs, temperature, and humidity, could theoretically estimate the general placement of people in a meeting room.

As Christl explains, because of the functionality that these types of sensor-based systems offer, there is the very real possibility of a creep from legitimate applications, such as managing energy use, worker health and safety, and ensuring sufficient office resources into more intrusive purposes.

“For me, the main issue is that if companies use highly sensitive data like tracking the location of employees’ devices and smartphones indoors or even use motion detectors indoors,” he says, “then there must be totally reliable safeguards that this data is not being used for any other purposes.”

Big Brother Is Watching

This warning becomes even more pressing where workers’ indoor location, movement, and behavior are concerned. Cisco’s Spaces cloud platform has digitized 11 billion square feet of enterprise locations, producing 24.7 trillion location data points. The Spaces system is used by more than 8,800 businesses worldwide and is deployed by the likes of InterContinental Hotels Group, WeWork, the NHS Foundation, and San Jose State University, according to Cisco’s website.

While it has applications for retailers, restaurants, hotels, and event venues, many of its features are designed to function in office environments, including meeting room management and occupancy monitoring. Spaces is designed as a comprehensive, all-seeing eye into how employees (and customers and visitors, depending on the setting) and their connected devices, equipment, or “assets” move through physical spaces.

Cisco has achieved this by using its existing wireless infrastructure and combining data from Wi-Fi access points with Bluetooth tracking. Spaces offers employers both real-time views and historical data dashboards. The use cases? Everything from meeting-room scheduling and optimizing cleaning schedules to more invasive dashboards on employees’ entry and exit times, the duration of staff workdays, visit durations by floor, and other “behavior metrics.” This includes those related to performance, a feature pitched at manufacturing sites.

Some of these analytics use aggregate data, but Cracked Labs details how Spaces goes beyond this into personal data, with device usernames and identifiers that make it possible to single out individuals. While the ability to protect privacy by using MAC randomization is there, Cisco emphasizes that this makes indoor movement analytics “unreliable” and other applications impossible—leaving companies to make that decision themselves.

Management even has the ability to send employees nudge-style alerts based on their location in the building. An IBM application, based on Cisco’s underlying technology, offers to spot anomalies in occupancy patterns and send notifications to workers or their managers based on what it finds. Cisco’s Spaces can also incorporate video footage from Cisco security cameras and WebEx video conferencing hardware into the overall system of indoor movement monitoring; another example of function creep from security to employee tracking in the workplace.

“Cisco is simply everywhere. As soon as employers start to repurpose data that is being collected from networking or IT infrastructure, this quickly becomes very dangerous, from my perspective.” says Christl. “With this kind of indoor location tracking technology based on its Wi-Fi networks, I think that a vendor as major as Cisco has a responsibility to ensure it doesn’t suggest or market solutions that are really irresponsible to employers.

“I would consider any productivity and performance tracking very problematic when based on this kind of intrusive behavioral data.” WIRED approached Cisco for comment but didn’t receive a response before publication.

Cisco isn't alone in this, though. Similar to Spaces, Juniper’s Mist offers an indoor tracking system that uses both Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth beacons to locate people, connected devices, and Bluetooth tagged badges on a real-time map, with the option of up to 13 months of historical data on worker behavior.

Juniper’s offering, for workplaces including offices, hospitals, manufacturing sites, and retailers, is so precise that it is able to provide records of employees’ device names, together with the exact enter and exit times and duration of visits between “zones” in offices—including one labeled “break area/kitchen” in a demo. Yikes.

For each of these systems, a range of different applications is functionally possible, and some which raise labor-law concerns. “A worst-case scenario would be that management wants to fire someone and then starts looking into historical records trying to find some misconduct,” says Christl. "If it’s necessary to investigate employees, then there should be a procedure where, for example, a worker representative is looking into the fine-grained behavioral data together with management. This would be another safeguard to prevent misuse.”

Above and Beyond?

If warehouse-style tracking has the potential for management overkill in office settings, it makes even less sense in service and health care jobs, and American unions are now pushing for more access to data and quotas used in disciplinary action. Elizabeth Anderson, professor of public philosophy at the University of Michigan and the author of Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives, describes how black-box algorithm-driven management and monitoring affects not just the day-to-day of nursing staff but also their sense of work and value.

“Surveillance and this idea of time theft, it’s all connected to this idea of wasting time,” she explains. “Essentially all relational work is considered inefficient. In a memory care unit, for example, the system will say how long to give a patient breakfast, how many minutes to get them dressed, and so forth.

“Maybe an Alzheimer’s patient is frightened, so a nurse has to spend some time calming them down, or perhaps they have lost some ability overnight. That’s not one of the discrete physical tasks that can be measured. Most of the job is helping that person cope with declining faculties; it takes time for that, for people to read your emotions and respond appropriately. What you get is massive moral injury with this notion of efficiency.”

This kind of monitoring extends to service workers, including servers in restaurants and cleaning staff, according to a 2023 Cracked Labs’ report into retail and hospitality. Software developed by Oracle is used to, among other applications, rate and rank servers based on speed, sales, timekeeping around breaks, and how many tips they receive. Similar Oracle software that monitors mobile workers such as housekeepers and cleaners in hotels uses a timer for app-based micromanagement—for instance, “you have two minutes for this room, and there are four tasks.”

As Christl explains, this simply doesn’t work in practice. “People have to struggle to combine what they really do with this kind of rigid, digital system. And it’s not easy to standardize work like talking to patients and other kinds of affective work, like how friendly you are as a waiter. This is a major problem. These systems cannot represent the work that is being done accurately.”

But can knowledge work done in offices ever be effectively measured and assessed either? In an episode of his podcast in January, host Ezra Klein battled his own feelings about having many of his best creative ideas at a café down the street from where he lives rather than in The New York Times’ Manhattan offices. Anderson agrees that creativity often has to find its own path.

“Say there’s a webcam tracking your eyes to make sure you’re looking at the screen,” she says. “We know that daydreaming a little can actually help people come up with creative ideas. Just letting your mind wander is incredibly useful for productivity overall, but that requires some time looking around or out the window. The software connected to your camera is saying you’re off-duty—that you’re wasting time. Nobody’s mind can keep concentrated for the whole work day, but you don’t even want that from a productivity point of view.”

Even for roles where it might make more methodological sense to track discrete physical tasks, there can be negative consequences of nonstop monitoring. Anderson points to a scene in Erik Gandini’s 2023 documentary After Work that shows an Amazon delivery driver who is monitored, via camera, for their driving, delivery quotas, and even getting dinged for using Spotify in the van.

“It’s very tightly regulated and super, super intrusive, and it’s all based on distrust as the starting point,” she says. “What these tech bros don’t understand is that if you install surveillance technology, which is all about distrusting the workers, there is a deep feature of human psychology that is reciprocity. If you don’t trust me, I’m not going to trust you. You think an employee who doesn’t trust the boss is going to be working with the same enthusiasm? I don’t think so.”

Trust Issues

The fixes, then, might be in the leadership itself, not more data dashboards. “Our research shows that excessive monitoring in the workplace can damage trust, have a negative impact on morale, and cause stress and anxiety,” says Hayfa Mohdzaini, senior policy and practice adviser for technology at the CIPD, the UK’s professional body for HR, learning, and development. “Employers might achieve better productivity by investing in line manager training and ensuring employees feel supported with reasonable expectations around office attendance and manageable workloads.”

A 2023 Pew Research study found that 56 percent of US workers were opposed to the use of AI to keep track of when employees were at their desks, and 61 percent were against tracking employees’ movements while they work.

This dropped to just 51 percent of workers who were opposed to recording work done on company computers, through the use of a kind of corporate “spyware” often accepted by staff in the private sector. As Josh Bersin puts it, “Yes, the company can read your emails” with platforms such as Teramind, even including “sentiment analysis” of employee messages.

Snooping on files, emails, and digital chats takes on new significance when it comes to government workers, though. New reporting from WIRED, based on conversations with employees at 13 federal agencies, reveals the extent to Elon Musk’s DOGE team’s surveillance: software including Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, a Dynatrace extension, and security tool Splunk have been added to government computers in recent weeks, and some people have felt they can’t speak freely on recorded and transcribed Microsoft Teams calls. Various agencies already use Everfox software and Dtex’s Intercept system, which generates individual risk scores for workers based on websites and files accessed.

Alongside mass layoffs and furloughs over the past four weeks, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency has also, according to CBS News and NPR reports, gone into multiple agencies in February with the theater and bombast of full X-ray security screenings replacing entry badges at Washington, DC, headquarters. That’s alongside managers telling staff that their logging in and out of devices, swiping in and out of workspaces, and all of their digital work chats will be “closely monitored” going forward.

“Maybe they’re trying to make a big deal out of it to scare people right now,” says Bersin. “The federal government is using back-to-work as an excuse to lay off a bunch of people.”

DOGE staff have reportedly even added keylogger software to government computers to track everything employees type, with staff concerned that anyone using keywords related to progressive thinking or "disloyalty” to Trump could be targeted—not to mention the security risks it introduces for those working on sensitive projects. As one worker told NPR, it feels “Soviet-style” and “Orwellian” with “nonstop monitoring.” Anderson describes the overall DOGE playbook as a series of “deeply intrusive invasions of privacy.”

Alternate Realities

But what protections are out there for employees? Certain states, such as New York and Illinois, do offer strong privacy protections against, for example, unnecessary biometric tracking in the private sector, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act covers workers as well as consumers. Overall, though, the lack of federal-level labor law in this area makes the US something of an alternate reality to what is legal in the UK and Europe.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act in the US allows employee monitoring for legitimate business reasons and with the worker’s consent. In Europe, Algorithm Watch has made country analyses for workplace surveillance in the UK, Italy, Sweden, and Poland. To take one high-profile example of the stark difference: In early 2024, Serco was ordered by the UK's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), to stop using face recognition and fingerprint scanning systems, designed by Shopworks, to track the time and attendance of 2,000 staff across 38 leisure centers around the country. This new guidance led to more companies reviewing or cutting the technology altogether, including Virgin Active, which pulled similar biometric employee monitoring systems from 30-plus sites.

Despite a lack of comprehensive privacy rights in the US, though, worker protest, union organizing, and media coverage can provide a firewall against some office surveillance schemes. Unions such as the Service Employees International Union are pushing for laws to protect workers from black-box algorithms dictating the pace of output.

In December, Boeing scrapped a pilot of employee monitoring at offices in Missouri and Washington, which was based on a system of infrared motion sensors and VuSensor cameras installed in ceilings, made by Ohio-based Avuity. The U-turn came after a Boeing employee leaked an internal PowerPoint presentation on the occupancy- and headcount-tracking technology to The Seattle Times. In a matter of weeks, Boeing confirmed that managers would remove all the sensors that had been installed to date.

Under-desk sensors, in particular, have received high-profile backlash, perhaps because they are such an obvious piece of surveillance hardware rather than simply software designed to record work done on company machines. In the fall of 2022, students at Northeastern University hacked and removed under-desk sensors produced by EnOcean, offering “presence detection” and “people counting,” that had been installed in the school’s Interdisciplinary Science & Engineering Complex. The university provost eventually informed students that the department had planned to use the sensors with the Spaceti platform to optimize desk usage.

OccupEye (now owned by FM: Systems), another type of under-desk heat and motion sensor, received a similar reaction from staff at Barclays Bank and The Telegraph newspaper in London, with employees protesting and, in some cases, physically removing the devices that tracked the time they spent away from their desks.

Despite the fallout, Barclays later faced a $1.1 billion fine from the ICO when it was found to have deployed Sapience’s employee monitoring software in its offices, with the ability to single out and track individual employees. Perhaps unsurprisingly in the current climate, that same software company now offers “lightweight device-level technology” to monitor return-to-office policy compliance, with a dashboard breaking employee location down by office versus remote for specific departments and teams.

According to Elizabeth Anderson’s latest book Hijacked, while workplace surveillance culture and the obsession with measuring employee efficiency might feel relatively new, it can actually be traced back to the invention of the “work ethic” by the Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries.

“They thought you should be working super hard; you shouldn’t be idling around when you should be in work,” she says. “You can see some elements there that can be developed into a pretty hostile stance toward workers. The Puritans were obsessed with not wasting time. It was about gaining assurance of salvation through your behavior. With the Industrial Revolution, the ‘no wasting time’ became a profit-maximizing strategy. Now you’re at work 24/7 because they can get you on email.”

Some key components of the original work ethic, though, have been skewed or lost over time. The Puritans also had strict constraints on what duties employers had toward their workers: paying a living wage and providing safe and healthy working conditions.

“You couldn’t just rule them tyrannically, or so they said. You had to treat them as your fellow Christians, with dignity and respect. In many ways the original work ethic was an ethic which uplifted workers.”