Tessa knew she was being watched. After ten minutes of keyboard or mouse inactivity, a timer would appear on her transcription software, asking her to select a reason for the pause. A medical transcriptionist in Atlantic Canada, Tessa (who has been granted a pseudonym to avoid any conflict with her employer) works remotely, spending her days alone with doctors’ voices and diagnostic codes. Fusion, the platform she uses, logged her inactivity in detail, and Microsoft Teams displayed an “Away” status just five minutes after her last keystroke. Her employer had set a target: transcribe at least eighty minutes of audio dictation per shift. Falling short could raise questions—especially if the inactivity logs suggested too much downtime.

There were no meetings, no memos, and no consultations when the system was introduced—only a training session and the unspoken expectation that any lull needed explaining. “Especially working from home, I feel the surveillance is much more imposed,” she says.

Surveillance at work isn’t new. For years, employers have monitored warehouse staff, delivery drivers, and call centre employees—often in the name of efficiency, safety, or customer service. These environments offered early test beds for surveillance tools: GPS location tracking, productivity quotas, call recordings, and biometric scanners. But what began on shop floors and factory lines is now migrating into white-collar professions. Contract lawyers and remote administrative staff are increasingly subject to the same forms of monitoring—only digitized and dispersed across home offices and laptops. For many workers, both remote and in person, the workplace has quietly shifted into a site of constant measurement—where every pause can trigger scrutiny and where productivity is no longer just about results but continuous presence.

Tessa’s experience is far from unique. Surveillance technologies are now embedded across nearly every aspect of the digital workplace. These systems can collect sweeping amounts of data, often well beyond what’s necessary to perform a job. Voiceprints, facial recognition, movement patterns, and even sleep cycles or private conversations can become part of a digital profile that’s silently monitored and evaluated.

The pandemic accelerated the shift. When COVID-19 forced offices to go remote, the informal structure of the workplace fell away. “If you were in the office, you were at work,” explains Matt Hatfield, executive director of digital rights group OpenMedia. Informal cues, like a manager’s glance or a colleague’s nudge, could guide performance without the need for granular oversight. But remote work disrupted that tacit system. While many employees adapted well without direct supervision, others struggled, and many managers found themselves flying blind—unsure of how staff were spending their time or how to intervene. Surveillance software promised a fix. A new crop of “bossware” applications—such as Teramind,........

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