Technology that allows bosses to spy on employees

The Japan News.Net
Thursday 11th March, 2010 (ANI)

A Japanese phone company has come up with a new technology that can track most minimal movement of mobile phone users and beams the information back to HQ.

KDDI Corporation, which has developed the technology, intends to offer the service to clients such as managers, foremen and employment agencies, or whoever may be interested keeping in check the activities of their employees.

"Technically, I think this is an incredibly important innovation," the BBC News quoted Philip Sugai, director of the mobile consumer lab at the International University of Japan, as saying.

He added: "For example, when applied to the issue of telemedicine, or other situations in which remotely monitoring or accessing an individual's personal movements is vital to that service.

"But there will surely be negative consequences when applied to employee tracking or salesforce optimisation."

The new system uses analytical software to detect more complex behaviour, unlike sensor systems.

The software is held on a server back at base, to match patterns of common movements.

Hiroyuki Yokoyama, head of web data research at KKDI's research labs in Tokyo, said: "It's part of our research into a total ubiquitous technology society, and activity recognition is an important part of that.

"Because this technology will make central monitoring possible with workers at several different locations, businesses especially are very interested in using such technology to improve the efficiency of their workers.

"We are now at a stage where we can offer managers a chance to analyse more closely the behaviour of staff."

KDDI is presently in negotiation with a Japanese employment agency that employs contract cleaners and security. (ANI)

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