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Monthly Archives: November 2024

Tracking Indoor Location, Movement and Desk Occupancy in the Workplace

Cracked Labs. Case study “Tracking Indoor Location, Movement and Desk Occupancy in the Workplace” – “As offices, buildings and other corporate facilities become networked environments, there is a growing desire among employers to exploit data gathered from their existing digital infrastructure or additional sensors for various purposes. Whether intentionally or as a byproduct, this includes personal data about employees, their movements and behaviors. Technology vendors are promoting solutions that repurpose an organization’s wireless networking infrastructure as a means to monitor and analyze the indoor movements of employees and others within buildings. While GPS technology is too imprecise to track indoor location, Wi-Fi access points that provide internet connectivity for laptops, smartphones, tables and other networked devices can be used to track the location of these devices. Bluetooth, another wireless technology, can also be used to monitor indoor location. This can involve Wi-Fi access points that track Bluetooth-enabled devices, so-called “beacons” that are installed throughout buildings and Bluetooth-enabled badges carried by employees. In addition, employers can utilize badging systems, security cameras and video conferencing technology installed in meeting rooms for behavioral monitoring, or even environmental sensors that record room temperature, humidity and light intensity. Several technology vendors provide systems that use motion sensors installed under desks or in the ceilings of rooms to track room and desk attendance. This case study explores software systems and technologies that utilize personal data on employees to monitor room and desk occupancy and track employees’ location and movements inside offices and other corporate facilities. It focuses on the potential implications for employees in Europe. To illustrate wider practices, it investigates systems for occupancy monitoring and indoor location tracking offered by Cisco, Juniper, Spacewell, Locatee and other technology vendors, based on an analysis of technical documentation and other publicly available sources. It briefly addresses how workers resisted the installation of motion sensors by their employers. This summary presents an overview of the findings of this case study.”

Yes, That Viral LinkedIn Post You Read Was Probably AI-Generated

Wired: “AI-generated writing is now all over the internet. The introduction of automated prose can sometimes change a website’s character, like when once beloved publications get purchased and overhauled into AI content mills. Other times, however, it’s harder to argue that AI really changed anything. For example, look at LinkedIn. The Microsoft-owned social media site… Continue Reading

Water Conflict Chronology

Citation: Pacific Institute (2024) Water Conflict Chronology. Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA. https://www.worldwater.org/water-conflict/ – “In an ongoing effort to understand the connections between water resources, water systems, and international security and conflict, the Pacific Institute initiated a project in the late 1980s to track and categorize events related to water and conflict, which has been continuously… Continue Reading

Two Hundred Million Bluesky posts scrapped by 2 different groups

Failla A, Rossetti G (2024) “I’m in the Bluesky Tonight”: Insights from a year worth of social data. PLoS ONE 19(11): e0310330. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310330 “Pollution of online social spaces caused by rampaging d/misinformation is a growing societal concern. However, recent decisions to reduce access to social media APIs are causing a shortage of publicly available, recent,… Continue Reading

Senators Say TSA’s Facial Recognition Program Is Out of Control

Gizmodo: “A bipartisan group of 12 senators has urged the Transportation Security Administration’s inspector general to investigate the agency’s use of facial recognition, saying it poses a significant threat to privacy and civil liberties. Their letter comes just before one of the busiest travel periods of the year when millions of Americans are expected to… Continue Reading

The Original Meaning of Treaties

Duncan B. Hollis, Temple University School of Law, is publishing The Original Meaning of Treaties in volume 173 of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (2025). Here is the abstract. For nearly two centuries all three branches of the federal government have thought that the original meaning of the Constitution’s references to treaties and compacts… Continue Reading

The intensifying threat of Donald Trump’s emolument

CREW: Donald Trump will violate the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses if he serves as president and fails to divest from his businesses. Likely sources of his illegal emoluments would include, but not be limited to: Truth Social parent company, Trump Media and Technology Group Trump World Tower Saudi-funded LIV Golf league and Real estate… Continue Reading

Surveillance Self-Defense Tips, Tools and How-tos for Safer Online Communications

We’re the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an independent non-profit working to protect online privacy for over thirty years. This is Surveillance Self-Defense: our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying. Surveillance Self-Defense (SSD) is a guide to protecting yourself from electronic surveillance for people all over the world. Some aspects of this… Continue Reading

Remember Nuzzel? A similar news-aggregating tool now exists for Bluesky

Nieman Lab: “The creator of Sill says “the death of the link” has had disastrous consequences for journalism, art, and the web. His free social media tool entered public beta on Friday.  The link collection tool Sill is now available to all Bluesky and Mastodon users, the app’s creator Tyler Fisher announced on Friday. If… Continue Reading