Employee Lawsuit Accuses Apple of Spying on Its Workers (semafor.com) 41
A new lawsuit filed by a current Apple employee accuses the company of spying on its workers via their personal iCloud accounts and non-work devices. From a report: The suit, filed Sunday evening in California state court, alleges Apple employees are required to give up the right to personal privacy, and that the company says it can "engage in physical, video and electronic surveillance of them" even when they are at home and after they stop working for Apple.
Those requirements are part of a long list of Apple employment policies that the suit contends violate California law. The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.
Those requirements are part of a long list of Apple employment policies that the suit contends violate California law. The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.
Personal iCloud account (Score:4, Insightful)
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Would be very interesting to see if/how Apple manages to break security of allegedly "zero-knowledge-encryption" of personal iCloud accounts to achieve this.
These are allegations made by one disgruntled employee.
You shouldn't give them too much credibility.
Many of the allegations are implausible, and others are about publicly available information, such as his LinkedIn page.
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Probably aren't allowed to have ADP on for the work account.
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Is that moral or ethical? I would say no. Is is legal? I'd also probably say no, but no one follows the law anymore. Catch me if you can. The same arguments apply to anyone using Apple, but literally every other company is taking data from you, storing, processing, and monetizing it, because it's just too abstract for regular dummies to get their head around. Also, if you object to those practices, like I do, you'd have to stop using
As I've said before.... (Score:2, Insightful)
[...] even when they are at home and after they stop working for Apple
Like I've said before: if your employer wants to 'own' you 24/hrs a day, then they should pay you triple the standard wage for your position. Though I'm not sure how they could claim any power over you after you stopped working for them. I guess this is where lawsuits come in.
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if your employer wants to 'own' you 24/hrs a day, then they should pay you triple the standard wage
You are welcome to demand that during the job interview. Good luck.
My "on call" days are past, but when I was younger, I often received bonuses for being available for after-hours emergencies. Loyalty and professionalism are rewarded.
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Your bonus cost the employer much less than having a second person on call. What style of onion was on your belt back then?
LoL. It was the style at the time. Beeeees. Give me 5 bees for a quarter.
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You are welcome to demand that during the job interview. Good luck.
If they're up front about it and you accept those conditions, then yeah you should expect that. But I suspect this was a "I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further"-type thing after they took the job.
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This isn't even about being on call. It is when an employer thinks it can control what employees do in their free time. The idea of on call in the first place is, "in the event of an emergency, you can expect to be contacted in your free time". Saying what you can and can not do in your free time goes far far over the line, unless the company pays you a LOT more that you would get paid at another company.
You work for big corp that's what you get (Score:3, Insightful)
I am hold enough to remember back when IBM workers got HR demerits for wearing shorts in public. On the beach.
If there is a big pile of private information that is accessible to someone, that someone is going to use it unless there are strong measures in place to stop that from happening.
Reminds me of Matt Gaetz, the paragon of virtue somebody thought would be a great AG. He and his little friend were discovered to be searching the DMV data base for girls to hit on. They had access. So they did it. That's typical.
Now imagine a huge financial incentive.
Re:You work for big corp that's what you get (Score:4, Interesting)
>If there is a big pile of private information that is accessible to someone, that someone is going to use it unless there are strong measures in place to stop that from happening.
I never did. I worked with many, many others who didn't either. And I worked with a couple who did and got away with it, and a couple who got walked directly out the door when it was discovered they had.
Point is, you CAN trust most people under most circumstances, but you are absolutely stupid to trust ALL people under all circumstances. Safeguards, auditing, and severe punishments are mandatory to increase confidence to the point it's worth the risk to trust the system. And the auditing and punishment needs to be handled by a third party or you're going to get cover-ups.
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>I am hold enough to remember back when IBM workers got HR demerits for wearing shorts in public.
My father worked with the first man to refuse to wear a hat at IBM and not get fired for it.
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He was called into the boss's office and asked if he was going to wear a hat, said, 'no', and... that was it.
Apparently the timing was right for his value as an employee to be allowed to exceed the value of the dress code being enforced.
My policy (Score:5, Insightful)
My policy has always been never to use products or services from companies I work for. The only exception was when I owned the company.
I worked for a Web hosting company that gave employees free web hosting. No thanks.
If you work for Apple, keep your personal stuff on non-Apple infrastructure. Don't use Apple devices as your personal devices. That said, if the allegations of this guy are true, then Apple is pretty evil. It shows what kinds of shenanigans employers can get up to in a country without any real protection for workers.
Re:My policy (Score:5, Funny)
My policy has always been never to use products or services from companies I work for.
Same for me. I work at the IRS.
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I agree with this, but it doesn't go nearly as far as it used to. You can use non-Apple devices and use third-party or self-hosted mail and cloud services, but you're probably still going to h
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Yes, it's hard to escape completely, but at least if you're self-hosted they can't shut down your account or services.
For email, the only way to stop Google/MSFT/Apple from scanning them is to use PGP or GnuPG. Unfortunately, that's cumbersome and adoption is not widespread.
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If you use PGP your messages will be encrypted so, your content is as safe as PGP is strong. As you probably know, not that many people use PGP. If you interopera
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That's all very true, but just because someone's genitals are within reach doesn't mean it's alright to grope. If your customers give you consent to scan their
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but in the case of scanning emails
Re:My policy (Score:4, Informative)
People get paid good money at Apple. If I had that sort of disposable income I'd upgrade my cheap Android for one of those foldable Samsung Galaxy thingees.
If your employer mandates that you sign up for a 'personal iCloud account', examine your life choices.
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Re: My policy (Score:3, Insightful)
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As long as you had the option to turn it down, that's fine. I would really like to see the details of this suit, but haven't been able to find the actual complaint anywhere.
The actual complaint (Score:2)
Every employer does this if they can (Score:2)
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Friends and coworkers who posted in order to spout off about their job, political beliefs, sexual habits, and associations with others who would not be looked on favorably- always suffered because of it. Its not fair and certainly not legal but big brother is always watching.
Not sure what makes you think it's not legal.
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It's legal. If you are that stupid to post your life on a public forum with your real name, etc, you deserve whatever comes your way. Just because you CAN post on social media doesn't mean you MUST post on social media.
At the very least, make a private group for friends and family that only friends and family can access. Really though, you don't have to broadcast your life to the world.
It's the new AI (Score:2)
Apple Ironic
Somebody just watched "The Circle." (Score:2)
Pretty bad movie, but some of what they portrayed seems to be the wet dream of the tech-fetish cults of today. I guess I'd say it's possible that it's happening, but I find the plausibility sitting somewhere south of the 50/50 probability line. For a start, Apple's pretty profit focused, and I can't see the profit in tracking employees to that level of detail AFTER they leave the company.
Unless Apple is working on a world simulation to try to predict coming trends. In which case, employment status would hav
Don't work for them (Score:3)
This is what sticks in my craw:
"For Apple employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It is a prison yard. A panopticon where employees, both on and off duty, are subject to Apple’s all-seeing eye,”
I'm sorry,this is totally unacceptable.
But you only have a stark binary choice:
1. Continue to work for them while under a fluoroscope.
2. Quit.
There are no other options. Complaining about it will only lead to a papering your personnel file.
In the USA, there is a nobility, and even though the founders tried to eliminate it, they only succeeded eliminating the titles. This because human nature always selects leaders who operate a level above the rest of us. American nobility consists of everyone at the C-level in a company, management advisors such as Mc Kinsey, and the lawyers who assist C level management with writing up terms such as these.
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Of course they're spying... everyone does (Score:2)
How many companies can you name who actually and actively respect and fight for privacy, I'll extend this into the government as well? Unless you take active steps to keep yourself private, and your data private, the assumption isn't that it will be used against you, the assumption is it's digitally molested within an inch of its usefulness.
If you don't encrypt
So given the choice, they choose poorly? (Score:4, Interesting)
"For instance, according to the suit, Apple requires that employees only use Apple-made devices for work. Because Apple puts restrictions on the devices it owns, most employees end up using their own Apple devices, according to the suit.
When using their own devices, they’re required to use their personal iCloud accounts and must agree to using software that gives the company the ability to see virtually anything happening on that device, including its real-time location." It then goes on to state, without proof, "To evade Apple’s surveillance, employees could use a work-owned device and use a separate iCloud account only for work, but the suit says the company “actively discourages” work-only iCloud accounts."
Therefore an Apple employee is given the option of a work-owned device, on which they can setup a work-related Apple ID account. Professional, and Life/Work lives balances maintained separately.
However this person selects to use their own device; with their own Apple ID account; agreed to allow Apple to install monitoring software on said device; and then sue because Apple can (not does or did, but can) view their personal Apple ID account information on device? (Which, by the way, you have to grant access to as you have extremely granular control as to what Apple ID information is synced.)
What am I missing? This seems like Apple gives them options, and when they choose the most invasive option available, complain that it's an invasive option, yeah?
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What am I missing? This seems like Apple gives them options, and when they choose the most invasive option available, complain that it's an invasive option, yeah?
You are missing self respect. No company should be able to "offer" those "options". Period. It should never even be a consideration... and yet here we are, with you missing why it is a problem.
FYI, CAPTCHA is tyranny... think about it kind sir. Think about it.
Well DOH! (Score:2)