[wcski]

This article lost me when it counted identity verification software as "surveillance tech".

[akshaybhalotia]

If the identity document mandated to be verified is one that allows not only private businesses but also the government to build profiles and use them against private citizens with no legal recourse in case of misuse (criminal or otherwise) and is trivial to obtain for an adversary, it very much is "surveillance tech". Please look up everything you can about the horrors of the identity scheme called "AADHAAR" in India.

[barumrho]

I get where you are coming from, but identity is the foundation of surveillance.

[nessbot]

I mean regardless of whether it has value in being used, it's pretty much, by definition, "surveillance tech."

[Aurornis]

If everything is "surveillance tech" then nothing is.

Certain functions like remote employee clock-in with geolocation (literally the first example company in the article) are perfectly reasonable to record the employee's GPS coordinates, in my opinion. If you're clocking in at the job site, having some record that you were actually at the job site isn't an invasion of privacy.

[wcski]

Eh. Depends on how it's deployed and used, doesn't it? To me, it's like calling a bouncer at a club a private investigator.