Unions call bio-scanners 'geo-slavery'
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Unions call bio-scanners 'geo-slavery'*
You have an employer in Ohio who has demanded that two of his employees
have micro-chips implanted in their bodies.
By Michelle Nichols in New York
January 27, 2007 07:10am
Article from: Herald-Sun
THE planned roll-out of hand geometry scanners in all New York City
government agencies has sparked union cries of "geo-slavery" and
assertions that technology developed for security will be used to track,
label and control workforces.
"It's frustrating, it's kind of an insult," said Dennis Colson, 53, a
surveyor at New York City's Department of Design and Construction. "They
are talking about going to voice and retina scanners and that's an
invasion of privacy in that they can track you wherever you go."
Jon Forster, of the Civil Service Technical Guild, which represents
Department of Design and Construction workers, said the biometric
systems gave the city a license to obtain personal, uniquely
identifiable data to track workers.
"It's really a matter of this kind of technology having far outstripped
any legislation or even case law in the United States in terms of what
are the restrictions," Mr Forster said.
"On the one hand I think people might all agree that if you put a GPS
system in an ambulance then that's a good thing. On the other hand you
have an employer in Ohio who has demanded that two of his employees have
chips implanted in their bodies."
"If these are the extremes, the question is where does the line get
drawn?" he said.
"The unions' arguments keep changing, but the tracking workers
throughout the day is not true. It's just for clicking in and out," said
Stu Loeser, spokesman for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, adding that
there were no plans to install voice recognition or iris scanners.
Biometrics expert Jim Wayman, who consults for the US, British and
Australia governments, said mobile phones and credit cards were the "No.
1 enemies" for workers worried about geo-slavery, not biometrics.
"There may be large forces at work in western society wishing to enslave
the workforce. I want to acknowledge that fear. But hand geometry is not
part of this," said Mr Wayman, who has studied biometrics for more than
two decades.
He said monitoring computer and phone usage were the "tools by which an
employer would seek to enslave the workforce – it would not be done
through biometrics."
In 2004, US employers reportedly spent $US9 billion on monitoring
devices for the workplace, while a 2005 survey by American Management
Association and The ePolicy Institute found 76 per cent of companies
monitor workers Web site use.
The survey of 526 US companies also showed 36 per cent of employers
track computer content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard, while
half store and review employees' computer files and 55 per cent retain
and review e-mail messages.
Only 5 per cent used GPS in phones and 8 per cent used GPS in company
vehicles, while fingerprint scanning only accounted for 5 per cent,
facial recognition 2 per cent and iris scans 0.5 per cent.
"Most people in the industry are surprised that biometrics devices have
not become more widespread already," Mr Wayman said.
"There is a 40 year history of implementation of biometric devices, but
use of these devices has never become widely popular and one of the
reasons is they are thoroughly expensive to use and it's not clear the
cost savings in their use."