No, not the Threat to Democracy posed by Sinclair - although that seems pretty fucked up too - we're talking about an even more direct threat to one of our dearest freedoms, the very freedom that makes this blog and many other blogs possible in the first place: the Freedom to Slack at work is under attack, and I am afraid, very afraid.
Big Brother may not be watching you, but Big Employer probably is.
In an era in which workers with Internet connections have found ever more ways to amuse themselves -- from feeding their EBay obsession to instant messaging their buddies -- employers have also found new technological tools to put a damper on such diversions.
Consider Christopher Faulkner, who runs C I Host, a Web-hosting firm that keeps a close eye on what its 190 employees do in San Jose, Los Angeles, Chicago and Texas. "They are told up front in their employment contract that they are being monitored," he said.
He watches what Web sites they go to, restricts instant messaging to fellow employees and uses software to monitor their every keystroke. He has fired workers who were caught doing particularly inappropriate things, like the person who took advantage of the firm's bandwidth to distribute pirated copies of Microsoft Office and movies...