American company Apple is being accused of collecting data from company-owned devices, including personal iPhones used by employees for work. The company demands that its employees give up their rights to privacy and surveils them, Apple employee Amar Bhakta claims and he is suing the tech company.
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38C3: The program for the Chaos Communication Congress is readyBhakta, who has been with the company since 2020 and works as a digital advertising technology operations manager, filed the lawsuit in California Supreme Court in Santa Clara County on Monday. In this he has accused the iPhone maker of accessing employee data through devices managed by the company. As first reported by US news portal SemaphoreApple’s policies, which all new employees must sign, allow the company to access, search and monitor all data on employees’ devices and their iCloud accounts, Bhakta said.
comprehensive data access
According to the lawsuit, many Apple employees, including Bhakta himself, use their personal iPhones and Macs for work. in this case They are encouraged to use their personal iCloud accounts and agree to the use of software that gives the company access to all data stored on the device and its location in real time. It says, “Data may include emails, contacts, reminders, entire photo libraries, Internet browsing data, health data, messages, ‘smart home’ data, passwords, apps, files, documents, calendars, notes, and backups ” While employees can use a work device and have a separate iCloud account just for work, the lawsuit says Apple “actively discourages” having work-only iCloud accounts.
Bhakt also claims that Apple suppresses the expression of its employees. He was banned from attending public lectures about digital advertising. According to the lawsuit, he was also forced to remove information about his work at Apple from his LinkedIn page—a violation of California labor law.
“The Apple ecosystem is a prison yard”
“For Apple employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It is a prison yard. A panopticon in which employees are exposed to Apple’s omniscient vision, both on and off duty,” it says almost poetically. Says. Apple naturally sees things differently. “At Apple, we’re focused on creating the world’s best products and services, and we work to protect our teams’ inventions for customers,” an Apple spokesperson said in an emailed statement. For tech portal The Verge message sent. “Every employee has the right to speak about their pay, working hours and working conditions and this is part of our code of conduct, on which all employees are trained annually. We disagree with these claims (Bhakta, versions) and believe that they are unfounded.”
The suit was filed under the California Private Attorneys General Act. This law allows employees to sue for labor violations on behalf of the State of California. According to Semaphore, if Apple is found liable by a court, the company could face a fine multiplied by the number of employees affected for each violation.
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