And we thought the NSA was bad! Apparently Jersey City, New Jersey is having problems with abuse of the system and now feel the only way to fix it is by spying on their employees. Public employees who use city-owned vehicles, both on and off the clock, will now have a GPS tracking system installed in the cars.
The city is now able to track where those vehicles are anytime with a smartphone app, whether the employee is on or off the clock.
Mayor Steven Fulop says, “We can track where they go, how long the ignition has been on for or off for, what the stops are, how long they’d been at each stop, so it creates another measure of accountability.”
It seems pretty sad that the only way to get their employees to comply with workplace rules is by having the city literally follow them. Who is going to be monitoring these GPS devices and what kind of trips are allowed on the clock? This gets a lot more complicated as soon as you start having the government step into the lives of its employees. Perhaps it is time to just hire trustworthy people who aren’t going to abuse the system?