The kinds of surveillance capabilities of powerful institutions such as JPMorgan Chase
The kinds of surveillance capabilities of powerful institutions such as JPMorgan Chase
More than half a dozen employees at America's largest bank tell Insider why the firm's surveillance has them feeling fearful and untrusted.
There was also a related post on Reddit on May 13, 2023, titled: A warning for anyone working at or thinking about working at JPMorgan Chase & Co., an incredible and horrifying read. The original post was eventually removed for some reason but was archived.
These posts go into detail about a program at JPMorgan called WADU, an acronym for Workforce Activity Data Utility.
TLDR of WADU:
WADU is an artificial intelligence & machine learning system for workforce human behavior. It is part of a surveillance system that monitors everything that employees are doing at all times, analyzes things like facial expressions to produce bio-metrics such as attention/focus and stress.
"Upper management pushes a narrative that all this surveillance is required to safeguard the firm against insider threats. While that may be partially true, the main reason is to train and refine the AI/ML system. They want every employee profile to be as accurate and as detailed as possible."
This article and that reddit post provide valuable insight into the kinds of surveillance methods and capabilities currently being used by powerful institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the world.
This is the kind of information collecting (surveillance) and processing (AI/ML) that this company is using against it's own employees, for the purpose of maximizing productivity and knowing as much as absolutely possible, to an absurd unfathomable degree, of each and every employee.
It's a demonstration of the sort of incredible but paranoid nature of highly intelligent information systems owned by large, powerful institutions.
I wonder what other surveillance and intelligence capabilities that entities such as JPMorgan or other similar kinds of institutions (e.g. Citadel) might have, for tracking people, for tracking all kinds of information.
I have to imagine that they possess other similar incredible intelligence capabilities in other areas. For example, monitoring the entire social media landscape to assess emotional sentiment, to use this data in order to better position themselves with access to all kinds of different data sources, to basically try and produce a nearly omniscient view of the entire market and economy of everything in the entire world, where the money is moving, who is moving it, who holds what, etc. etc. Just incredible tools to give them access to a view of information that gives them a competitive advantage over competitors that might not have such sophisticated intelligence capabilities.
In the context of DRS GME, I think this is important.
GME is a unique stock of the idiosyncratic risk variety, something that poses a threat to a multitude of incumbent financial players and maybe even the financial system itself to some degree.
If this is a view that is held seriously by some group or faction out there (e.g. GME investors), a view that that faction is aware of, the implications of it being so large, then it is hard to believe that the incumbent major players are not aware of the intricacies of this situation, players that possess incredible intelligent capabilities, such as JPMorgan Chase and other large banks, Citadel Securities and other market makers, Fidelity Investments and other huge brokerages / financial services companies, etc.
For example just consider Fidelity. Fidelity we know lead an investment round into Reddit in summer of 2021, some number of months after the sneeze of January 2021, perhaps around the same time that everyone was being told to Forget GameStop. This was also around the time when superstonk, on Reddit, was the preeminent social media location for GME investors, investors of the stock of the idiosyncratic risk variety.
Fidelity is also a major stock broker and has demonstrated awareness and contempt of DRS GME investors. As a large brokerage they would have access to all of the information of how much GME is being bought and sold at any given moment in time, and how many DRS requests are being sent per day, how many DRS shares per day, etc.
They would be able to plot all of their live direct trading and DRS request information that they have in house, and measure it against sentiment on reddit in places like superstonk. As Reddit investors, they could potentially have access to large amounts of valuable information in Reddit about user behavior, sentiment, etc., on any given day.
I suspect that Fidelity has the ability to track DRS GME information to a more accurate degree than was being tracked by the GME investment community, for example with computershared.net at the time using data pulled from superstonk and other subreddits.
I suspect that Fidelity's data models probably provided the view that, based on the changing rate of DRS, etc., over time, from late 2021, through 2022, until now, that the total amount of shares of GME that would get DRS'd would slow down and stagnate around 25% of shares outstanding. I have to imagine that they are tracking this valuable and worthwhile information for the same reason that GME investors are tracking it, because it is meaningful and important. And if they are tracking it, then I have to imagine that their ability to do so is very great.
If they knew of the impending stagnation, then others would know too. And this information would all be worthwhile to be used to maximize the effectiveness of maintaining their own positions, as well helping them to stay in control of the narrative, and whatever other ways they might use such information to their benefit.
TLDR: The DRS GME situation is very peculiar, and if we know all about it, then they know all about it. Any incumbent that knows about it is going to be doing whatever they can do to protect themselves from exposure to liability.
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On the subject of monitoring employee "bio-metrics", I'm just imagining that the information dashboards they have is almost like a game of the Sims. A manager can probably click on any one of their subordinates and get a live data model that gives all kinds of information.
"This employee really needs to use the toilet, it has been 3 hours since the last washroom break"
"This employee has gone to the washroom 4 times this morning. Other data indicators suggest that this employee might have a medical condition"
"This employee will need a fresh cup of coffee within 30 minutes, based on the data of the regularity of coffee consumption"
It all kind of reminds me of this joke:
The doctor says, "I have this great new machine that's coming in tomorrow. You give me a urine sample and the machine will diagnose exactly what's wrong with you. Bring me a sample tomorrow and we'll run it through."
Ron thinks this is a load of crap so he decides to play a trick on the doctor. He collects urine samples from his wife, his teenage daughter, his young son, and his dog, and finally, jerks off into the vial. He takes it to the doctor and can hardly contain his smirk when the doctor pours it in the machine.
"Huh", says the doctor. "These are the strangest test results I've ever seen."
"Really?", says Ron. "What does it say?"
"It says your wife has herpes, your daughter is pregnant, your son isn't yours, your dog has worms and if you don't quit jerking off you're never going to get rid of that sore wrist."
in all seriousness, it would not surprise me if JP Morgan had sampling devices built in to their plumbing that was analyzing employee urine. Lot's of valuable information in urine. It sounds ridiculous, and it is. But this is the world we live in
I imagine also that WADU, which is listening and watching and analyzing literally everything that every employee is doing at all times, probably also has a view on all interpersonal relationships. WADU probably knows who is friendly with who, who is feuding with who, who might have emotional feelings for who, which employees are having a secret affair that isn't out in the open, but WADU knows.
WADU can probably detect many / all facets of an employee's personality, e.g. whether an employee is passive / assertive / aggressive. Information that managers could use to best maximize their interactions with their employee knowing with incredible data models how best to handle such a person.
WADU probably has an accurate map of the entire social hierarchy. Who is the most well-liked and who is the least well-liked, who has interpersonal influence into other employees, and so on.
It's kind of scary to imagine the incredible power that a system like WADU gives to the management at the company. You could be an employee with a secret that nobody else could possibly know about. You get called in to your manager's office to have a conversation. You aren't even aware that WADU already knows all about your secret, and has informed your manager, who is about to ask you questions to see how far you will lie to cover up the secret that they already know about.
What a horrifying employment environment. It is a great example of how power corrupts, or how power enables corruption. This is what I would call a corrupt work environment. The employees are treated like robots, all of their behavior is measured and analyzed, against all of the measurements of all the other robot employees. Sure, they probably make good salaries, but one of the conditions of employment is that they must necessarily sell their humanity to the employer.