A UK Police Force Suspends Working From Home After Finding Automated Keystroke Scam (bbc.co.uk) 57
The Greater Manchester Police force has 12,677 employees. But they've now suspended work-from-home privileges, reports the BBC, "following an investigation into so-called 'key-jamming', which can allow people to falsely appear to be working. "Twenty-six police officers, staff and contractors are facing misconduct proceedings following the probe, the force said."
One constable told a hearing that a police detective working from home had made it look like his computer was in use on 38 different occasions over 12 days, according to an earlier BBC article. The evidence "showed lengthy periods where the only activity is single keystrokes, pressing the 'H' key about 30 times, between 10:28 and 11:56 GMT on 3 December, and then the 'I' key more than 16,000 times." The detective "used key jamming for 45 hours out of a total of 85 he was logged in for and was frequently away from the keyboard for half of his working day."
The constable said the detective's motivation was "laziness" — and the detective has already resigned.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
One constable told a hearing that a police detective working from home had made it look like his computer was in use on 38 different occasions over 12 days, according to an earlier BBC article. The evidence "showed lengthy periods where the only activity is single keystrokes, pressing the 'H' key about 30 times, between 10:28 and 11:56 GMT on 3 December, and then the 'I' key more than 16,000 times." The detective "used key jamming for 45 hours out of a total of 85 he was logged in for and was frequently away from the keyboard for half of his working day."
The constable said the detective's motivation was "laziness" — and the detective has already resigned.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
Found it (Score:2, Interesting)
The automated method they used [tenor.com]
police officers working from home? and not on the (Score:5, Interesting)
police officers working from home? and not on the beat?
Re:police officers working from home? and not on t (Score:5, Funny)
No doubt patrolling social media for hurty words.
Re:police officers working from home? and not on t (Score:5, Funny)
Re:police officers working from home? and not on t (Score:5, Informative)
Police detectives tend to not work "a beat", but instead a selection of cases. Reviewing paperwork from the field can easily take up most of their time. They could have to be reading like a hundred witness statements to try to figure out what actually happened, most likely, who's lying, and why. Collaborating testimony with other evidence, reviewing security camera footage, reading test results - DNA, fingerprint, drug, residue, etc... Deciding whether or not there's enough evidence to try for a warrant or the UK's equivalent. Following up with witnesses, scheduling interviews, etc...
Re:police officers working from home? and not on t (Score:4, Informative)
police officers working from home? and not on the beat?
Most detective work is a significant amount of paperwork and desk jobs. Not everyone in the police department drives around issuing fines for broken tail lights.
Re: (Score:2)
"rear" lights in this case
Re: (Score:2)
Eggs and bacon in this case.
Re: (Score:2)
police officers working from home? and not on the beat?
You can order dinner and watch a movie, from the shitter now. Not sure why you feel anyone walks a beat in this world.
We all live in one state now. The surveillance state. And clearly AI will soon be taking that desk monitor job away from humans too lazy to do it.
should of used the bird to hit the letter y (Score:1, Funny)
should of used the bird to hit the letter y
Re: (Score:2)
Who mods this down? Watch more Simpsons!
Re: should of used the bird to hit the letter y (Score:2)
Probably a grammar nazi such as myself.../s
AT... (Score:3)
Again, this sort of thing is a management problem (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think, if someone is managing a group of detectives, they would be regularly discussing progress on their cases, hearing about specific steps taken in investigations, etc. etc. If you can't meet face to face (and I seriously doubt that "deep cover" is that common), you could certainly require reports that included that sort of specific info.
If you're resorting to management by keystroke logger, you're likely a lazy or incompetent manager who shouldn't be in that position. You're really only gonna catch the really, REALLY dumb workers.
Re: (Score:2)
You're really only gonna catch the really, REALLY dumb workers.
And hopefully not detectives, but here we are.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're resorting to management by keystroke logger, you're likely a lazy or incompetent manager who shouldn't be in that position. You're really only gonna catch the really, REALLY dumb workers.
You're assuming one or the other. It's not like any of these companies substituted performance reviews with keystroke loggers. It's just another tool that managers have implemented to a) track employees, and b) provide leverage over them should the situation arise they need to get rid of them.
Or the cynic in me says c) use it as a pretence to eliminate a popular work policy.
Re:Again, this sort of thing is a management probl (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think, if someone is managing a group of detectives, they would be regularly discussing progress on their cases
I would say not. They should stop trying to micromanage detectives and their work flows, as that is only to frustrate them.
Detectives are senior mental workers much like writers, or designers in certain engineering, or art fields.
They are bound to spend a lot of time on the clock making no progress at all, And in addition spend a lot of time thinking while not on the clock, in the shower, etc, the subconcious organizes thoughts when conditions are right -- which can be attributable to 90% of the progress you ever can even get. Which kind of also means that having them log hours or monitoring their computer usage as some kind of proxy to amount of work done, is also complete bullshit. Especially for any detectives who may have to go out into the field and look at places to stimulate their intuitive senses sufficiently to come back and make progress. There are necessary activities for thought workers which can't be categorized as work by corporate standards, but which are necessary to the process. Including being lazy and procrastinating from time to time. The keyjamming is not necessarily a flaw - for all we know they may be a high-performing detective within a system that has ignorant executive management and stupid policies.
One does not Ping Sherlock holmes or Fox Mulder, every 4 hours for a status update on his thought process, or even every day for that matter. One does not harass the graphics designer every hour about when they are going to get past their art block on creating such and such, and forward movement, etc. You wait, and as professionals it is upon them to report once they are organized and ready to report.
The progress on cases is a glacial thing; even with hardworking detectives--you don't more regularly have progress to discuss, than perhaps a monthly or bi-weekly update on case files they've taken. If the day is spent reading reports and other necessary activities: most of the time they simply won't have anything to give you. It also does not make sense for a detective to write reports about reports. And as a mental discipline the detectives would need time to organize their thoughts. It's not a good idea to disrupt peoples' workflows and ask for them to make extra reports just to have a proof that they are working. Reports like that do not cause progress, and quite the opposite. More unnecessary work and a slowing down the process is the result of inserting additional problems for the detectives to solve.
Also; I don't believe controlling where the detectives work is a solution to this problem -- the whole keylogger thing or caring about where they work shows a misguided approach. Th detectives are presumably just as likely to spend time pretending to read reports while goofing off at a central office.
This should not necessarily be a huge deal either. Progress can be stalled on many cases for reasons that are outside detectives' controls.
Fresh leads may be lacking. Those forensic samples the labs are going take months to get back can be pivotal to the direction of the cases, etc. Detectives are going to be appraised eventually by whether or not they solve the cases, and how many they do manage to close. That is where the performance measurements exist, And it is the detectives' jobs to make certain they deliver. A detective's manager's jobs is not to micromanage detectives' case work,
Makes sense now (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Eggsactly.
This is a management failure. Calling RTO won't solve laziness. Might even make it easier to wonder around with paper in hand waffling to anyone.
Chairborne Rangers (Score:1)
Processing paperwork, recovering from injury, "administering" or "supervising"... Every law enforcement agency has a surprising number of sworn staff members who not out in the field.
Quite an overreaction... (Score:3)
I'm curious why it would even matter. Are the detectives hitting their metrics? Are cases getting done? If so, why care so much that one has to perhaps skirt near violating regulations with a keylogger?
If performance is an issue, perhaps a word to the wise, with escalating stuff?
Re:Quite an overreaction... (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is dishonesty.
Police officers are supposed to be of good moral character and act in an honourable manner. (Whether this is actually the situation on the ground is a separate issue.)
These folks have shown themselves to be unfit to be police officers.
Re: (Score:2)
These folks have shown themselves to be unfit to be police officers.
So are the people who required the keyloggers. Bad judgement seems endemic to the police force.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
These folks have shown themselves to be unfit to be police officers.
These folks have shown themselves to be ordinary humans. That is actually expected, but, for some reason, we treat police officers as if they are not humans at all. This has advantages and disadvantages to the officers and the public. It is rather schizoid overall, which is why there are so many police suicides and domestic violence.
Re: (Score:1)
Lying to your employer and taking active steps to create and sustain that lie isn't "actually expected" of anyone other than a sociopath or a criminal.
Certainly not someone in a position of trust like a police officer.
The Simpsons... (Score:3)
The Simpsons already pegged this "scam"...
https://youtu.be/R_rF4kcqLkI?t... [youtu.be]
JoshK.
Re: (Score:2)
But why suspend working from home? (Score:2)
It's already obvious that employees are performance managed and tracked, and that they can monitor for lazy employees and boot them from the company. Why would they cancel the work from home policy because of this?
Do they think it's a better idea to keep lazy dead weight around in the office?
Re: But why suspend working from home? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hhhh Hhh Hhhhhh Hhhhh (Score:2)
Hhhh Hhh Hhhhhh Hhhhh Hhhh Hhh Hhhhhh Hhhhh
Pressing letter I 16000 times (Score:1)
The cop had it covered with a drinking bird at the keyboard. Simpsons strike again!
Detection rate? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They found 26 cases out of just short of 13,000 staff, so 0.2% of the total. A quick internet search suggests that 1/3rd of the staff are admin/operations/lawyers and I suspect that at any given time at least 1/3rd of the rest are working through investigations and case documentation, so about half the total are probably working on a computer (rather than on the beat) at any given time. This suggests that they found somewhat under 0.5% of the desk staff doing this. Based on my pre-COVID experience of working in British offices, if only 0.5% of the staff were playing Solitaire, doom-scrolling social media or taking a tea-break and nattering about last weekend's football match then it would be considered a profound leap forward in productivity!
Pretty much this.
By forcing everyone back into the office you're not going to force the workshy to start working, they'll just have to go back to their old, tried and trusted methods of avoiding work by walking around, having conversations, drinking coffee, going to Greggs and pointless meetings. In fact it's going to be a productivity sync as they love to drag others into their pointless meetings to make it look like they're doing something... which drags the productive people away from being productive
Wrong on all levels. (Score:2)
No one should do this. And no one should use it as an excuse to a cancel working from home programs. Why not? The police officers willing to use illegal methods to pretend to work are not the hero cops.
These people, they would not be working in the office either. They are the guys that by the water cooler talking and bull shitting. They are the ones that take a four hour long lunch break.
The best situation is what happened - the main guy quit. Hopefully the others will be fired too.
This is not a good
Manchester police (Score:2)
Shouldn't they be out investigating Arabs?
just wait (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
Untrustworthy police officers? omg, who'd have thunk? I'm surprised they didn't try to cover it up and blame the victim - oh wait, they are also the victim, so self-interest takes precedence over.. self-interest - stack overflow.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, 26 out of 13,000. Sounds like rampant corruption all right!
You'd think a detective... (Score:2)
Would understand that other detectives tend to catch up with those who commit fraud.
Or maybe, they thought that everyone else was as corrupt as they were.
Vi? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they got stuck in vi and have been trying to figure out how to get out.
Is it the only quality benchmark they had? (Score:1)
Typical (Score:2)
Lineage comes to mind (Score:2)
I used to jam a penny in between mouse buttons to keep it clicking while farming AFK.
Bizarre opening sentence (Score:2)
The Greater Manchester Police force has 12,677 employees. But they've now suspended work-from-home privileges
Bizarre opening sentence for an article.
Greater Manchester Police force (Score:2)
Keys clicking... (Score:2)
This is the old "lazy teacher" scenario (Score:2)
"Little Johnny misbehaved so the entire class is not going to get recess time today."
Sheesh