More Camera Phone Banning In The Workplace

from the copycats dept

Tue, Jul 29th 2003 9:44pm — Mike Masnick

A few weeks back we reported that over in South Korea, Samsung was banning cameraphones in the workplace despite being one of the largest producers of cameraphones. Copying them on this move is fellow South Korean company Hyundai who is setting up X-ray machines to keep the camera phones out. Still seems like overreacting, and certainly isn't going to make their employees very happy, many of whom are currently on strike. Telling your employees you can't even trust them with such a dangerous phone seems to be going a little overboard in the paranoia department. Meanwhile, if these sorts of things continue, it's clearly going to harm the camera phone business. There's certainly a lot less incentive to buy one if you can't even take your phone to work.

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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2003 @ 9:56pm

The larger picture
Imagine if some magazine in South Korea "exposed" a scandal of Samsung employees taking indecent pictures of female co-workers. Not only would Samsung lose credibility within Korea, Westerners might argue boycotting Samsung to "stop the oppression of women" or whatever.
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Mike (profile), 29 Jul 2003 @ 10:01pm

Re: The larger picture
Um. That definitely seems like the "smaller" picture to me. You're focusing in on one possible misuse of the technology, which could be explained away as some idiot misusing the technology. That's not the "larger" picture. It's picking out a stupid person and then blaming the technology.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jul 2003 @ 11:14pm

Re: The larger picture
No, if that idiot happens to work for the maker of the cameras, it speaks poorly for the maker.

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Marc H. Nathan, 30 Jul 2003 @ 8:33am

Re: The larger picture
The sexual harassment issue pales in comparison to the corporate espionage issue. I believe very strongly that companies should trust their own employees but there is an obvious security issue with those same employees who were disgruntled enough to go on strike. In the hypercompetitive world of Asian manufacturing, banning cameras in the workplace makes perfect sense. Also, if you really want mobile her-ass-ment, try www.mobileasses.com
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Jul 2003 @ 9:25am

Re: The larger picture
There are two main items:

1. Corporate Espionage - As mentioned above, the reason for the bad in Korean companies. Keep in mind that a MAJORITY of workers for these Korean companies are now in CHINA (they, like the U.S.. are moving factories there as fast a possible). While native Koreans have a great work ethic and, at least up until recently, had almost lifetime employment at the major Chaebols and had no reason to steal corporate secrets, this is not true in China, where skilled workers and engineers move almost yearly in the main manufacturing areas (sort of like a lower-cost version of Silicon Valley's hey-day)

2. Sexual Harrassment Lawsuits - This is not really an issue in Asia (except as noted above), but in the U.S., corporations will have to have an "official" ban on these phones and other cameras so that when the lone bad person who sets up a camera in the IBM ladies' room gets caught, IBM is protected against a "environment of sexual harrassment" lawsuit since they have a rule on the books that this item was banned.
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