Er… Yes it is. It’s called a punch clock. In the company I worked for 3 years ago, the RFID-enabled turnstile we had to go through to get in also served to calculate our working hours. And the workers on the assembly lines had to clock out and back in when they went to the can.
This is very widespread in many companies. Just as Amazon employees.
I feel like the term “tracking” is being used too ambiguously here.
It seems like @amal is talking about positional tracking where as the system @anon3825968 is describing is metric tracking. As exemplified by this which seems like you both agree:
There are some location tracking systems that I have heard of that use active transmitters for employee tracking, eg they pick up there location from beacons and transmit it via wifi to a server.
But for the most part tracking is metric based, time in, time out, packages scanned per min, etc.
What I think @amal’s point is that using passive RFID tags to do precice location tracking of personnel is so inefficient that it is unlikely to be used on any large scale anytime soon.
Yeah okay, I see your point: employee tracking done as cattle - “asset” as it’s cutely known - tracking for humans. I think it’s not done because people don’t take being managed like cattle too kindly. But I’m sure our capitalist overlords would love nothing better if those pesky unions didn’t get in the way 
An old company I worked for went through a stage where they tried to rename HR to People and Operations. They got quite upset if you called them HR. 
I know you said you don’t work there anymore, but forcing employees to clock out for bathroom breaks (assuming you’re not in the head for longer than 30 minutes) is illegal and considered wage theft.
Ah but see, the company put a nice spin on that one: the blue collars could go to the john anytime they wanted, and as long as they wanted (nobody’s immune to a bad case of the trots) and they wouldn’t lose any wage whatsoever. The tricks was, if someone went to the can every day for 2 hours for a month, then HR could have a chat with them to figure out what’s what.
It was all perfectly legal. What’s more, the company was very heavily unionized - euro-style ultra-left unions, not wimpy US-style unions, too - and the unions agreed to that. So it goes to show, it’s possible to implement tight employee control one and manage to convince the unions to let it slide.
is that not appropriate though? i mean… being paid for 2 hours a day that you’re presumably using to sit on the toilet… hr should have a chat no? I mean, they should be inquiring as to the health of their employee at that point, right… like… making sure they are utilizing healthcare services… etc.
I didn’t say it was inappropriate, I simply explained how the company tracked the ins and outs of the workers without it impacting their wages, and how they managed to make hysterical left-wing unions swallow the pill, is all. Their use of bathroom breaks clocking was perfectly reasonable, and quite restrained, considering said union workers were renowned for using any trick in the book for doing as little work as possible - included extended bathroom breaks - and almost openly and boastfully doing so.
Sorry I went into a bit of a mode there… i’m so used to fighting with randos on the social medias that I forgot who I was talking to… there are nuances when it comes to implants that most people don’t see or understand, and the biggest one is that the risk profile in terms of privacy is exactly the same as the non-implantable versions of these devices… your privacy depends entirely on your choice to use the device, what you choose to use it with, and who those applications report your usage to (if at all).
I don’t fully agree with you on two points:
That’s true if you’re in a position to choose.
You’re free not to use that shopping fidelity card if you don’t like being tracked - or shop elsewhere if that particular chain forces you to scan it to purchase something. But if the company is a monopoly and you need their services (e.g. you need to scan your transport card to take the metro to commute to work), it becomes problematic. That’s why there are consumer protection groups.
Likewise if you need your job to earn a living: in the pure capitalist theory, if your employer forces you to scan your badge and abuses the clocking data, you’re free to leave and seek employment elsewhere if you don’t like it. In practice, the choice many people have is to put up with their job or go unemployed. That’s why there are unions.
As for Fidesmo, if I’m not happy with them being my authentication broker, I don’t have a choice because 1/ they’re alone in the implantable transaction chip space and 2/ even if they had a competitor, the only option to switch is to cut myself open with a scalpel and implant their competitor’s chip - which is a big incentive not to switch, obviously.
So the free market doesn’t really work with Fidesmo either: the only choice I have is not to implant with a Vivokey chip in the first place. After that, if I don’t like it, tough cookie. And if I need my Vivokey chip to get on that bus to work or pay for groceries… well, that’s Fidesmo being in a position to force me to use their services.
Actually, the risk with implantables is greater: it’s a lot easier to swap non-implanted transponders than implanted ones. If I’m not happy with Bank of America, I can open an account at UBS: they’ll give me a new debit card with a new transponder. If I’m not happy with one Fidesmo partner - be it a bank, a transit union or anything else - I’m stuck with Fidesmo.
Worse: since Fidesmo acts as an authentication broker for all their partners, anything I do with my Vivokey is monitored by them. That’s one powerful position to be in if (when?) Fidesmo decides to exploit my personal data to turn a profit.
agree, but this has to do with the transit company and not the form factor of the transit card.
agree, but this has to do with your employer abusing your clocking data and not the method that clocking data is collected be it scanning a badge or an implant.
expect removing an implant is far easier in many ways than changing so many other things in our lives, like getting a tattoo removed (hours of painful laser treatment and days of healing), divorcing someone you’ve changed your mind about, selling one house to move to another, or even just voiding one contract to explore another… there are so many more things in life that people get into and then change their mind later that take a much higher toll on them in terms of stress and financial commitment that (to me anyway) it seems silly that the idea of changing a chip implant out be anything more than an annoyance.
agree, but this is because bank cards are singular in their use case… Fidesmo is actually attempting to collapse those use cases on to a single transponder so you don’t have to toss your card to switch banks… this is at the core of their offering… and while not a utopian solution, it is powerful.
This is just false really… the only time they are involved is deploying or managing applets… and for this they don’t even require a user account… this was an overt decision they made to not require any kind of user accounts or tracking to be able to deploy and manage applets on your device… something we strongly aligned with strongly… and the only other place they get involved is the provisioning of the payment token to your device… they have no hand in the transaction, that’s all still between the processors and banks and MasterCard / Visa.
The cause of the concern doesn’t allay the concern
?!?!!
You’ve spent way too much time playing with scalpels and doing weird things to yourself, methinks…
Many people balk at the idea of getting blood drawn out with a thin needle, let alone get implanted with a larger ones. And most peple definitely balk at the idea of getting sliced open to replace an implant. Even I, who’s not very sensitive to pain and who’s not afraid to do weird things to my own body with odd tools either, would think twice or thrice before removing a glass implant. And I would think even more times before removing a flex-series chip.
Not to mention, most people can’t (and shouldn’t) do it themselves, so they need a professional to do it for them. That has a cost. Also, most people would rather have it done by a doctor than a body artist. That’s already an issue when installing the implant, it’s an even bigger one for the removal.
This is a major decision for anyone but you you know
Okay, I thought they handled all the transactions on behalf of their partners. I stand corrected.
I wasn’t aware of this, and frankly I’m in awe of that. They’ve earned a lot of respect with this. I hate companies data mining just because they know the users will tolerate it. Collect what you need to enable your service, then respect my privacy on the rest.
I don’t need 37 accounts, I just wanted to order a pizza for pickup… no, I don’t want to download you app, just let me click a button on your website!
agree, but your stated concern is not with implants or really RFID technology in general… and I thought that’s what we were discussing… like having concern about a mass shooting, but discussing whether a killer took the bus or a train to the concert he shot up… if that’s not the case and it was more of a statement about various abuses, I apologize.
Totally possible
While I agree entirely… the use of the term “most people” is where this argument trips a bit… “most people” don’t give two shits about most things you and I actually care about… from what Facebook is doing with their private data to their employer keeping track of their bathroom breaks… and I know, unfortunately, that when this technology hits the tipping point and Apple releases the “Apple Sport” fitness tracking implant or whatever implants these big companies will eventually come out with… “most people” won’t give a shit it’s fully Apple owned and controlled and go all in. This is just the way of things. The best we can do with VivoKey is make every attempt to minimize lock-in, maximize open source wherever possible, and always offer the best options for users to opt-out. For example, we are the only hardware partner with verbiage in our agreement with them that specifies that if a VivoKey customer with a Fidesmo connected device wants out, they will have the option to remove all applets and reset master keys to factory default. I insisted on this provision in our contract, and they implicitly understood the importance and immediately agreed. It’s working with partners like this that we will continue to focus on, even if most people won’t actually care.
Absolutely… and this is will be the driving philosophy behind our VivoKey services as we deploy them… we never want to be in a position where we’re even considering selling your personal data as a revenue stream. Because of this, we are entertaining a subscription model where you pay one flat fee for all premium VivoKey services beyond the basic platform. The somewhat contemporary adage isn’t all that old, but it is extremely apt - if the service is free, you are the product. We have no intention of turning our customers into our product, especially when it comes to VivoKey members. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Dangerous Things doesn’t even send out emails beyond order confirmations and shipping notices… we see people setting up special email addresses just to order from us… stuff like dangerousthings.order@blahblahdomain.com is actually somewhat common… and all I can think is - that email inbox is gonna be one lonely ghost town.
Lots of cool information in this thread. I’m not going to jump into the privacy debate, but what I do want to through out there is some of the cool things rfid people tracking is being used for. So if you’ve heard of Niagara you know it’s the best building automation system (BAS) out there for managing HVAC and lighting. Well they also have a security system which is okay, but it was built with the idea of integrating normal building automation with security.
Alright that was a lot of exposition, but what’s my point? Well when someone scans into the building you can turn on the lights leading to their office area, and keep the rest off. Or another example you can use the data of when people are typically scanning in to determine when to turn on the HVAC system. If you’re fancy enough to have smart coffee machines, you could also have a system that starts brewing a person’s favorite brew when they scan in. The possibilities are endless.
I do this but it might not be as much effort as you think. I own a domain and the email is a catch all so I could send email to dt@blahblahdomain.com or reddit@blahblahdomain.com and it all lands in the same mailbox, no additional setup required.
I mainly do this as it makes filtering rules easy 
and it at prevents a lot of automatic data correlation.
It’s also amusing to see what email address spam is sent too.
I started paying protonmail. I would gladly pay a bit to ensure my data isn’t being sold.
From my point of view a one time fee doesn’t guarantee a company will act a certain way for any length of time. Sure it gives them enough money today to not sell your data, but what happens when that money runs out? Not saying I think DT and Fidesmo are nefarious actors, but privacy shouldn’t play a factor into why you’ll subscribe to this potential service if it’s only a one time fee.
I guess I would have to reevaluate my need of the product vs the data they sell and how it will affect me.
I can take an implant out or just not use it at the end of the day.
Me either
It does to an extent. I had no idea how much info I was giving up along with other stuff.
Not a one time fee, one flat fee… meaning a single monthly subscription fee to get everything we release. I don’t typically like the nickel and dime approach to service offerings. For example I really dislike the idea of charging more to enable a feature that is a simple software solution that incurs no actual increase in cost for the service provider… that shit is annoying. On the other hand, we may still need some tier based fees for certain things… like paying a little extra on top of the base service fee if you want 10000000 terabytes of extra data storage on the VivoKey Vault or something like that… but we wouldn’t charge extra just to turn on shared folders or something like that.