Apple Illegally Surveilled and Censored Workers, Employee Lawsuit Says

Apple has been hit with a wide-ranging lawsuit accusing the company of invasively surveilling its employees and illegally restricting what they say about their jobs.

The case, first reported by Semafor, was filed Monday in California’s Santa Clara County superior court by Amar Bhakta, who works for Apple as a digital ad tech operations manager.

Bhakta claims that Apple’s policy requiring workers to use Apple computers, phones, and cloud services “subjects its employees to surveillance and forces their patronage through the monetization of employee personal data as a condition of their employment.”

Many Apple employees, including Bhakta, use their personal iPhones and Macs for work, according to the lawsuit, and are required to install an electronic sim card or virtual private network that gives Apple the ability to access any data stored on the device and track their location in real-time.

Apple also requires employees to use its iCloud service and for workers using their personal devices, that means granting the company virtually unrestricted access to their personal clouds, according to the lawsuit. “The data can include email, contacts, reminders, entire photo libraries, internet browsing data, health data, messages, ‘smart home’ data, passwords, apps, files, documents, calendars, notes and backups.”

The suit says that Apple’s policies, including the Business Conduct Policy that all new hires must sign, allow the company to access, search, and monitor all data and communications on employees’ devices and in their iCloud accounts.

Bhakta further alleges that the company’s policies restricting what information employees can share, including details about their compensation, violate California labor law.

While the suit is sparse on details regarding how Bhakta was hurt by the policies, it says that he was denied the opportunity to speak in public settings about his area of expertise, digital advertising, and forced to remove information about the working conditions at Apple from LinkedIn.

“Being able to speak openly about my work is so important to me professionally and personally,” Bhakta said in a statement released by his attorneys. “It’s disappointing that Apple, whose ethos is privacy and confidentiality, would try to monitor and censor me. That hurts my ability to advance professionally. I hope this complaint causes Apple to change their approach to monitoring employees outside of work and reminds employees that they have the power to stand up too.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit adds to a growing list of complaints about the company’s labor practices. In October, investigators with the National Labor Relations Board accused the company of imposing illegal confidentiality agreements, non-disclosure policies, non-compete policies, and social media policies on its nationwide workforce.