The article isn't clear whether agencies other than law enforcement are using these tools to spy internally on staff or externally on citizenry.
When I was working in gov we went through a phase where all machines had some kind of "forensic analysis agent" running on it "to capture state and data in case of a breach or malfeasance", and we argued often and long about the odds, value and effectiveness of data collection 24/7 for a hope during a fringe event.
These forensic tool companies sell fear and uncertainty very effectively, and they do not lack for paying customers who may never use the software for which they're taking on all this leak risk.
Looking at this more broadly, Fortune 500 isn't much better than government on this either.
BigCorp runs 24/7 surveillance on all company hardware, management runs reports on your keyboard/mouse activity, IT intercept your SSL traffic, leak your data to a bunch of dubious third-parties, etc.
But... also fails to use valid SSL certs on internal tools, even though they have an entreprise CA.
As for forensic tools and the reasons listed in the article, it all reads like plausible deniability to me.
Once they have said tool to "only use it internally pinky swear", we likely won't know of any abuse.
Not until a whistle-blower sacrifices themselves, knowing that said tool would also be used against them for whistle-blowing.
Not to mention that such software is itself a juicy target for anyone actually targeting the company.
The departments
Wasn’t this obvious after the whole NSA/Snowden thing?
The article isn't clear whether agencies other than law enforcement are using these tools to spy internally on staff or externally on citizenry.
When I was working in gov we went through a phase where all machines had some kind of "forensic analysis agent" running on it "to capture state and data in case of a breach or malfeasance", and we argued often and long about the odds, value and effectiveness of data collection 24/7 for a hope during a fringe event.
These forensic tool companies sell fear and uncertainty very effectively, and they do not lack for paying customers who may never use the software for which they're taking on all this leak risk.
Looking at this more broadly, Fortune 500 isn't much better than government on this either.
BigCorp runs 24/7 surveillance on all company hardware, management runs reports on your keyboard/mouse activity, IT intercept your SSL traffic, leak your data to a bunch of dubious third-parties, etc.
But... also fails to use valid SSL certs on internal tools, even though they have an entreprise CA.
As for forensic tools and the reasons listed in the article, it all reads like plausible deniability to me.
Once they have said tool to "only use it internally pinky swear", we likely won't know of any abuse.
Not until a whistle-blower sacrifices themselves, knowing that said tool would also be used against them for whistle-blowing.
Not to mention that such software is itself a juicy target for anyone actually targeting the company.