It started with a few lines of legalese and one of those simple tick-a-box consent forms. But the Australian workers who clicked yes say they had no idea they were setting themselves up for – being recorded in their homes via their laptop microphones for long periods, in some cases for up to 10 hours a day.

The Australian Financial Review reported the employees at Australian training company Safetrac first realised the extent of the surveillance via secretly installed software on their laptops when the company’s CEO talked about being “up all night” watching videos of their meetings. Staff and their families seeking privacy took to whispering in their homes or stashing the laptops in their closets. Victoria Police has launched an investigation and an employee has been granted compensation after developing anxiety and depression. The company says that all the monitoring was consented to by employees.

Credit: Joe Benke

This level of surveillance might sound like something out of Stasi-era East Germany, but it reflects a new workplace battleground, between employers worried about employees who might be slacking off, and worker rights to privacy in their homes, even when they’re “on the clock”.

Not all employees act in good faith. I’ve seen extensive “time theft” that only surveillance would reveal while employees are allegedly working from home. Examples include an employee doing six weeks of home renovations while on the clock, another streaming pornography daily (even during work Zoom calls), and........

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