If you enjoy the comfort of a white-collar job, you may be stunned to learn just how much you are being watched. Surveillance is

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问题     If you enjoy the comfort of a white-collar job, you may be stunned to learn just how much you are being watched. Surveillance is rising because work-from-home policies mean that employers are keen to keep tabs on their remote workforce. Before the pandemic, around one in ten of the large businesses asked by Gartner, a research firm, had spying software. Within three years it expects the share to reach 70%.
    Bosses also have ever-expanding amounts of data at their disposal, enlarging the digital footprint that can be monitored. Widely used software such as Google Workspace or Microsoft Teams can tell managers what time you clock in or how many calls you join on their platforms. The blurring boundaries between work and home mean that video surveillance and other intrusive tools are barging into workers’ personal lives, social-media accounts and private devices at all times of the day.
    The law is scrambling to adjust. In the state of New York employees subject to electronic monitoring must be told in advance, under a new law introduced recently. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation establishes some basic rights for staff. Yet it is still early days and the technology is advancing fast. As a result, most firms are only just getting their heads around how much remote work is likely to remain permanent.
    There are perfectly legitimate reasons for surveillance at work. Many jobs require monitoring for safety, security and compliance. In the same way that companies collect data on customers’ behaviour in order to improve their products, so employers are using monitoring tools to measure the productivity and engagement of their most important resource: their people.
    Yet it is easy to see the pitfalls. There is a long history of those with power abusing those without in the name of compliance and efficiency. In the most extreme cases, 20th-century despots ran vast informant networks, and some slave plantations in America and the West Indies kept tyrannical work records.
    Today’s workers are not indentured, obviously. But many studies link excessive individual surveillance to higher levels of stress. And if algorithms trained on biased data are used to make more decisions, the odds of discrimination will rise. One analysis found that AI systems consistently interpret black faces as being angrier than white ones.
    What to do? Employers should have a legitimate reason for surveillance. Although the boundary will take time to establish through case law and precedent, this is vital to ensure that monitoring is proportionate. Establishing clear guidelines is not easy, but qualms over the potential abuse of surveillance will grow. It’s time to start drawing some lines.
What can be learned from Paragraphs 2 and 3?

选项 A、Information of monitoring can be available to employees upon request.
B、Surveillance is promoted in part with the growth of digital technology.
C、Relevant laws are ineffective in protecting workers’ privacy rights.
D、Companies are inefficient in utilizing monitoring techniques.

答案B

解析 推断题。根据题干可定位至第二、三段。第二段第一句提到。Bosses also have ever-expanding amounts of data at their disposal, enlarging the digital footprint that can be monitored .(老板们掌握的数据量也在不断扩大,这扩大了可以监视的数字足迹范围),这反映了数字技术的发展在一定程度上推动了公司对员工采取的监视。选项B是对第二段内容的高度概括,故正确。A项属于无中生有,文中并未提及监视信息可根据要求提供给雇员,故排除。C项属于主观臆断,第三段前半部分列举了纽约州最近出台的一项新法规和欧盟的《一般数据保护条例》,但并未提到相关法律的实施效果如何,故排除该选项。D项属于主观臆断,第二段指出,老板们掌握的数据量也在不断扩大,同时扩大了可以监控的数字足迹范围;他们广泛使用软件,如谷歌工作空间或微软团队。这些都说明公司在监视技术方面并非效率低下,故排除该选项。故本题答案为B。
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