Employee lawsuit accuses Apple of spying on its workers

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.

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.

The lawsuit against Apple says the iPhone maker’s policies push
employees to meld their work and home lives digitally in a way that
gives Apple knowledge of what they are up to beyond their jobs.

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.

“If you use your personal account on an Apple-managed or Apple-owned
iPhone, iPad or computer, any data stored on the device (including
emails, photos, video, notes and more), are subject to search by
Apple,” the company’s confidential policy states, according to the
lawsuit.

Former employees have, in the past, complained about Apple’s ability to
access their personal information. The new lawsuit sheds more light on
the practice and the specific company policies that allegedly allow the
practice.

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.

Viewed through a more narrow lens, this lawsuit is interesting because
of the unique position workers at big tech companies are in when it
comes to employee surveillance.

We all assume, or should, that our employers can see what we do on
laptops and phones that they own. But if we are using our own devices
at home, we reasonably assume we’re not being spied on.

But there’s no way for employees to truly know if their employer is
looking, or not. Or whether their movements are being recorded or
stored in some way that could later come back to bite them.

Viewed through a broader lens, the lawsuit is interesting because it
puts Apple’s vast universe of personal data under the spotlight at a
time when it is pitching itself as the privacy-focused alternative in
the age of artificial intelligence.

Apple has long been able to pitch itself as a privacy-focused company
because of the businesses it is not in, such as targeted advertising.
It has worked hard to prevent its customers’ data from leaving Apple’s
ecosystem.

That didn’t mean Apple didn’t have access to a lot of very personal
data on its customers. It just meant that it wouldn’t use it to send
them targeted ads.

Apple customers are a lot like Apple employees. We give up a tremendous
amount of our personal information to the company and our belief that
it’s safe comes down to our faith in the company.

https://www.semafor.com/article/12/02/2024/employee-lawsuit-accuses-apple-of-spying-on-its-workers