The news comes from the daily newspaper cotidianul.ro (RO).
The application is named Cyclope, developed by Amplusnet, a Romanian company, and works on all Windows stations. It reports things such as the time spent on some filetypes, the time spent surfing the web and integrates with notions such as overtime hours, in order to provide HR with detailed information, not only on the statistical level but also on the personal one.
The current size of the target is roughly 10,000 employees in Romania and, according to Amplusnet, 50,000 employees in other countries.
Let's take this opportunity to remind that such spying upon employees is not legal everywhere. In Europe especially, different laws exist to make sure that the workplace doesn't become a hell. In France, the monitoring of employees is allowed only in a very strict legal framework (FR). In Switzerland, spying upon employees at work is completely illegal (FR). In Romania, there is more subtlety. Cristian Ducu has examined the matter (RO).
Friday, March 20, 2009
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I don't read Romanian, so I didn't understand the article from cotidianul.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean the use of cyclone is somehow legal there?
Oh! I forget that not everybody speaks Romanian ^^ In fact, Cristian's article was given just as an additional link, it analyses the morale question of spying/monitoring employees.
ReplyDeleteWhen I said that the situation is more subtle in Romania, I meant that the law is basically the same as the French one in the idea: monitoring is allowed when the employer has a good reason, spying isn't. But Romania lacks stricter definitions and lacks jurisprudence about this. So it's going to be a mess about it as soon as employees start rebelling.