{"id":80185,"date":"2026-03-02T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/?p=80185"},"modified":"2026-03-01T17:19:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T00:19:25","slug":"are-bossware-tools-tracking-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.opinionpublica.tv\/portada\/are-bossware-tools-tracking-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Are \u2018bossware\u2019 tools tracking you?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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While many workers worry that artificial intelligence will one day take their jobs, another use of A.I. and technology may already be quietly reshaping and degrading workplace conditions: \u201cbossware.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBossware\u201d refers to the technology some managers use to supervise and surveil employees in the workplace. The term was popularized by a 2020 report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy nonprofit, and has since come up in nonprofit reports and news coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorkplace surveillance has been going on since we\u2019ve had work,\u201d said Karen Levy, a professor at Cornell and the author of \u201cData Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance.\u201d Managers have always sought to keep an eye on employees to make operations more efficient. But the rise of A.I., she said, has allowed employers to monitor workers in \u201cmore predictive or granular ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the world of trucking, for example, A.I.-augmented video tools can trigger real-time alerts if a driver looks fatigued or is looking away from the road. In other fields \u2014including in some white-collar desk jobs \u2014 employers are using algorithmic and biometric tools to track habits and output. Some of the tools, including A.I.-driven ones, are packaged with enterprise software suites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of work-surveillance technology took off during the pandemic. As many people started working remotely, more employers began surveilling their teams in new ways: tracking keyboard strokes, taking screenshots and monitoring pauses. By 2022, eight of the 10 biggest private employers in the United States were tracking the productivity metrics of individual workers, The New York Times reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past few years, \u201cA.I. has helped to create a greater opportunity for omnipresent surveillance of workers,\u201d said Rob Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford and a co-author of \u201cSystem Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.\u201d Sophisticated A.I. tools are now available more cheaply, he said, which means they can be applied more broadly. Surveillance tools are now used in factories and in corporate offices; they monitor customer service agents, therapists and even chaplains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of these tools is to get more out of workers. But some metrics \u2014 like how much an employee is typing \u2014 may not translate cleanly to how much work someone is actually getting done. And workers, Dr. Reich argues, deserve periods of slack and \u201cmoments of downtime outside of the gaze of the surveillance tools that are meant to drive productivity gains.\u201d Such respites are good for workplace culture, he said, and they enable better workplace relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the psychological toll, \u201cbossware\u201d tools that push people to work faster and harder present \u201cserious health and safety risks for workers,\u201d including potential physical injury, said Laura Padin, a lawyer and director at the National Employment Law Project, a workers\u2019 rights nonprofit. She added that clear guardrails on worker surveillance and laws requiring companies to disclose how they use such technology would be \u201cgood policy interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tools, Dr. Levy said, are unpopular because they impinge on workers\u2019 well-being \u2014 and, in the case of truckers, her research has found, they don\u2019t necessarily improve safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGiving workers more autonomy in the workplace can help with retention and their capacity to do more creative work,\u201d Dr. Levy said, adding that getting worker buy-in around which technologies would actually be useful to them could help workplaces achieve a better balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, Dr. Reich thinks that even well-intentioned monitoring tools should be viewed cautiously because they may help advance a culture of surveillance. \u201cIt\u2019s obvious that the introduction of \u2018bossware\u2019 further tilts the power imbalance between supervisors and workers in favor of those with already considerably more power,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n