Mon Jan 1, 0001

Employer Surveillance (Bossware) and School Surveillance

Employer Surveillance

Growth During COVID

  • Gartner (April 2022): 60% of large employers deployed monitoring software, up from ~30% pre-pandemic
  • Digital.com (2022): 60% of companies with remote workers used monitoring
  • ExpressVPN (2021): 78% of employers used at least one monitoring tool
  • American Management Association (2023): 80%+ of major companies engaged in electronic monitoring

What These Tools Do

Keystroke logging, periodic/triggered screenshot capture, webcam activation, application/website tracking, productivity scoring, idle-time detection, email and messaging monitoring.

Major Vendors

  • Hubstaff (claims 95,000+ businesses)
  • ActivTrak (claims 9,000+ organizations)
  • Teramind
  • Time Doctor
  • Veriato

Scale

EFF “Inside the Invasive, Secretive Surveillance Software Installed on Millions of Workers’ Computers” (2020): demand surged 50-300% in first months of pandemic.

Legal/Regulatory

  • NLRB General Counsel memo (October 2022): intrusive electronic monitoring could violate NLRA worker rights
  • New York State law (effective May 2022): requires employers to notify employees of electronic monitoring
  • EU GDPR applied to limit workplace surveillance in multiple rulings

School Surveillance

Gaggle

1,500+ school districts as of 2022, monitoring ~5 million students. Scans school-issued email, documents, chat for flagged keywords. 2019-2020: flagged 700+ cases described as potential self-harm. CDT documented false positives including flagging LGBTQ+ content and innocuous assignments.

GoGuardian

10,000+ schools, ~27 million students. Real-time screen viewing, browsing history tracking, content filtering. Operates on take-home devices — monitoring extends to evenings and weekends.

Bark

6+ million students across thousands of districts. Scans social media, texts, email. Has reported cases to law enforcement.

Privacy Concerns

CDT survey (2022): 89% of teachers reported students monitored on school devices outside school hours. Documented cases of students flagged to police or CPS based on benign keyword matches. Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) and EFF raised concerns about chilling effects on student speech.

Sources

  • Gartner survey (April 2022)
  • EFF bossware report (2020)
  • CDT survey (2022) on school surveillance
  • NLRB General Counsel memo (October 2022)