Security Override
Tuesday, June 3, 2003. Entry #218

They are installing cameras at work.

Now that the renovations are nearly complete (nearly complete in the sense that they are busy plastering over their mistakes) the final bits are going up - artwork, stencils on the glass doors, random couches in places where no sane person would go to relax...

...and security cameras.

It's not like we're a high security building. The outside doors have card locks, but you can follow pretty much anyone inside, even if they don't know you from Adam.

It's not like we really need high security, in my opinion. It's not like we have any secret plans or information that could not be sussed out by someone clever enough to read between the lines in the Financial Post. No one is going to come in and walk out with the prototype for our new Alpha Dione 18 GHz coprocessor stuck in their armpit. Maybe a pair of Nikes, but that's about it.

That means, in my mind at least, that these cameras are not there to watch strangers. They are there to watch us.

And I don't particularly like that.

I can't really verbalize my distaste. I'm a pretty public person for the most part. I don't care if Yahoo! Installs cookies or my system, or that TiVo broadcasts your viewing patterns to the mother company for sale to advertisers. I certainly don't have nay problem letting people peer into chosen portions of my life, as I do here. And if Logitech hadn't crippled the webcam software they bundle with their cameras so I can't use it unless I pay a monthly fee to their chosen image hosting service instead of my own preferred server, you'd be watching my guinea pigs rampage around their cages right now.

But this is different somehow. It's like they don't trust us or something.

In head office terms, a corporation's most valuable assets are digital. Customer databases, often including credit card numbers, fetch high prices among the unscrupulous. There is proprietary data that could be used for some serious inside trading. But it's all on computer. No one is going to walk out the door with a box load of files, because they don't exist in the world of the Real. Disgruntled employees can stick their booty in zip files and upload them anywhere they want.

Cameras are not going to accomplish anything, unless they are trying to make people stop leaving gum under the seats of the random couches, or determine how much time the head of Marketing spends shmoozing the HR ladies in the hallway.

I don't get it.

I discovered months ago that if you name someone in your journal, they will find you and contact you, especially if you make jokes at their expense (Hi Dave!).

So, in an effort to draw more folks out of the woodwork, once in a while I'll mention someone here that I've lost track of over the years and maybe they'll Google their name and send me a note.

Today's 'Where Are They Now' is Jason Maskell. I knew Jason many years ago when he used to annoy me on local Calgary bulletin boards under the alias 'Red Knight'. He aggravated me so much that I had to make him a friend just to shut him up. But then he moved to North Battleford and I haven't heard from him since. So, if you're out there, Jason Maskell, fire me an email and let me know.

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