Published on the 29/05/2025 | Written by Heather Wright
Orwell’s 1984 in 2025…
Keylogging and apps that collect personal data to wearables, biometrics AI models to determine if an employee is concentrating – it’s not George Orwell’s 1984, but today’s reality for workers according to a Victorian parliamentary inquiry.
The Victorian Legislative Assembly Economy and Infrastructure Committee is calling for more effective workplace surveillance legislation and the appointment of a regulator to oversee workplace surveillance, after finding escalating use of monitoring, often without employees knowledge or consent, and the use of AI to analyse data and ‘make decisions’ about employees’ mood, attitude and performance.
“Surveillance has advanced… to incorporate keylogging, wearable trackers, biometrics, neurotechnology and artificial intelligence.”
It’s a situation the inquiry’s report says has a slew of negative impacts, from reducing job satisfaction, trust and commitment to an organisation, to occupational health and safety risks, to impinging on the privacy of workers and their families and communities.
The inquiry, which held public hearings late last year, notes that new technologies are making workplace surveillance – which it acknowledges can have legitimate reasons – more sophisticated and far reaching.
A survey of 370 workers by the Victorian Trades Hall Council found 61 percent of respondents said their workplace uses surveillance to monitor their work. Twenty-one percent were unsure. Most commonly used according to that survey were video surveillance, email and social media monitoring and audio surveillance. Keystroke monitoring, wearables, always active webcams and remote screenshotting of computer screens were less commonly deployed.
It’s a similar story across the rest of Australia, with a report last year showing almost half of Australian workplaces are suing some form of workplace surveillance software, including software to track computer activity.
A report from law firm Herbert Smith Freehills says 58 percent of Aussie companies are using automated tools to assess performance, and when it comes to remote workers, 52 percent are being tracked via website and keystroke trackers or even screenshots.
While numbers for New Zealand are hard to find, sales of monitoring software soared during the Covid lockdowns, with tech companies reporting a 300 percent increase in Kiwi sales, though from an unknown base. Amazon meanwhile was reporting an increase in ‘mouse jigglers’ designed to make it appear that the computer was in active use.
“In a short space of time, surveillance has advanced beyond camera footage and the recording of telephone calls to incorporate keylogging, wearable trackers, biometrics, neurotechnology and artificial intelligence,” Alison Marchant, chair of the inquiry, says. “Over this time, our privacy and surveillance laws have not kept pace.”
Marchant says it’s clear that many workers are unaware of the extent of surveillance and how their employers are handling and storing data collected through workplace surveillance – and that existing Victorian and federal legislation provides minimal protection.
“While there are legitimate reasons for employers to undertake surveillance, such as to ensure workers’ health and safety, it can become problematic when employers use surveillance covertly for other purposes.
“This can raise privacy concerns and cause distress for employees when their employer’s surveillance practices are unreasonable or excessive.”
The report also notes that research shows surveillance not only is unlikely to significantly improve productivity, but can produce counterproductive behaviours instead.
Marchant says Victoria shouldn’t wait to strengthen protections, but should instead lead the way with dedicated, principles-based legislation.
While the most common forms of workplace surveillance came via computer use, webcams, mobile phones and handheld scanners gathering data on work activities, determining location and the speed a task is completed, the report includes an extensive list of surveillance in use.
Heat tracking in rooms, smart wristband, cameras and scanners recording speed of warehouse workers and monitoring breaktimes and conversations with co-workers and headsets directing Woolworths warehouse staff on their tasks, setting targets for how long the task should take and measuring productivity and length of bathroom breaks, are all noted. (Woolworths’ distribution centre workers went on strike late last year, in part over the AI platform, eventually winning a new agreement that did away with the use of digital surveillance for punishing workers for the speed of their work.)
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, meanwhile required employees to download an app onto personal devices to access buildings, book a workstation, register visitors and report faults, but also used the app to continuously collect data on workers’ precise location. Some workers have been asked to apply for leave when they are away from their desk or appear unproductive.
CBA in a submission acknowledged that it uses mobile phone apps to monitor staff locations, along with a range of other forms of surveillance.
“Workplace surveillance that is excessive and lacks transparency has been shown to have a negative impact on employees’ morale, job satisfaction and commitment to their organisation,” Marchant says.
“It has also been shown that it can intensify work, adversely affect employees’ mental and physical health and exacerbate the power imbalance between employers and employees.”
The decreasing cost of software to analyse data is also playing a role, the report notes. A wide range of software, dubbed bossware or tattleware, is available to collect data to feed into performance management and predictive analytic systems.
The report says undisclosed function creep – where data obtained from surveillance technology installed for security purposes, for example, begins to be used to analyse worker performance – is proving problematic, aided by increasingly versatile technology.
It notes risk of data breaches and the potential for sensitive data, especially biometrics, collected during surveillance to be exposed.
Marchant also called out the lack of input from large employees and companies. Their input was sought, she says, but only one made an individual submission and none accepted an invitation to attend a public hearing.
The inquiry has recommended a principles-based workplace surveillance legislation that is technology neutral and places a positive obligation on employers to prove through a risk assessment that any surveillance they conduct is reasonable, necessary and proportionate.
Mimicking similar requirements in ACT – which alongside NSW is the only Australian state to have dedicated workplace surveillance laws – it has also called for employers to be required to give written notice to workers of surveillance, including the form of surveillance and how data will be used and stored, and for employers to be required to consult employees before introducing or changing surveillance practices.
Provisions to prevent selling data to third parties should also be included, the inquiry says and human reviews should be required for any automated decisions made using workplace surveillance data.
Student biometrics grab
The inquiry report comes amid reports biometric data was collected from NSW students a number of weeks before the NSW education department became aware of the issue.
The data was gathered via Microsoft Teams, which began enabling the data collection by default in March for voice and facial data enrolment into Teams meetings.
Both teachers and students were using Teams.
The Guardian, which broke the story, says the data is also fed into CoPilot to improve accuracy of transcriptions and summaries.
NSW education department switched off voice and facial enrolment in April and says the profile were deleted within 24 hours of the department becoming aware of the issue.
The Guardian says the department declined to answer questions about how many students or staff had their biometric data collected.
