Samsung Bans Camera Phones In The Workplace
from the gotta-ship-'em-out-the-door...-not-in dept
Emily Turrettini discovered that Samsung, makers of quite a lot of camera phones, are now banning them in their own factories, as they're afraid that people will use them for corporate espionage. The link that Emily originally included is now gone, but another story has the details including an answer to my first question: the factory that makes camera phones will not have the ban enforced. Seems like an over-reaction, but the number of such "mobile phones banned!" stories seems to be showing up at an increasing rate. It will be interesting to see if the resulting bans lessen the adoption rates of such phones, as people will realize there are additional tradeoffs.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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The post-celebrity era?
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camera phones
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Re: camera phones
The ban is a bit silly from a espionage stanpoint, but makes sense from a corporate governance standpoint.
If someone wants to do corporate spying, a ban on the cellphones isn't going to stop them. The real reason for any corporate ban would likely to avoid lawsuits by employees for imappropriate use by other employees. For example, if Cletus uses his phone to look up Marge's skirt while at work. With a corporate ban in place, the company is protected from Marge's lawsuit and Cletus can be fired. Without one, Marge can probably sue the company creating a "hostile workplace".
Although in Korea Samsung doesn't have to really worry about this, it will probably be a trend in the U.S.
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Re: camera phones
The main enforcement effort landed on the hourly factory workers. Several were caught, fired, and prosecuted for theft; there was even an organized group stealing cell batteries which got several hundred thousands of dollars worth of batteries before getting caught. But it was funny seeing all the engineers walking around with proto-phones or unreleased phones (functional of course). They could pretty much smuggle anything
they wanted out the front door.
They never got hassled about it.
A couple years ago, the new CellSector VP dropped the ban. They put in better inventory controls, tighter purchasing restrictions, and held lower level managers much more accountable for departmental equipment - I suspect this contributed much more to detering theft than any
ban ever did.
A mindless ban on something is usually a sign
that management doesn't understand the issue.
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Re: Re: camera phones
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Dvovcwgn1Q
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