Employee sues Apple over 'spying' claims tied to mandatory devices

Suing your employer while remaining employed is a risky play, but one Apple ad tech manager is trying it – claiming that the iGiant is forcing staff to expose their personal data and threatening them with pay clawbacks over non-compliance.

Amar Bhakta, who joined the biz in 2020, has filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara superior court claiming that his employer's insistence on staff only using Apple kit and iCloud accounts breaks existing California law. He claims [PDF] that this constitutes speech suppression, breaks privacy laws, and allows unlawful wage clawback through the removal of stock options for non-compliance.

"Being able to speak openly about my work is so important to me professionally and personally," declared Bhakta in a statement.

"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."

The lawsuit claims that Apple "requires employees to agree that they have no right to privacy in their Private Life Data (including location data), that Apple can engage in physical, video, and electronic surveillance of them and that it can, as it wishes, search both Apple and non-Apple devices and other property while an employee is on company premises, which – according to one Apple policy – can include an employee's home office."

Staff are permitted to use their own devices, but the iBiz "actively discourages" this and requires employees to use Apple devices, software, and services for work, according to the lawsuit. The filing alleges that this policy gives Apple access to significant amounts of employees' personal data.

"For Apple's employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It is a prison yard. A panopticon where employees, both on and off duty, are ever subject to Apple's all-seeing eye," the lawsuit alleges.

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Bhakta also claims that Apple staff are forbidden from discussing salaries, and that this has resulted in women being underpaid in comparison to male staff. He also claims that Apple insists on limiting the amount of personal information he can post online, harming his job prospects.

All of this is enforced, according to the lawsuit, by Apple allegedly threatening to claw back stock options for non-compliance. Bhakta claims this practice is used to maintain employee compliance and argues that it violates California law.

Quite why Bhakta chose to bring this lawsuit after four years with the iBiz – and after presumably reading and agreeing to his employment contract – isn't clear. He remains employed by Apple.

"We want Apple to change its policies and practices to comply with California law and give its workers the rights that they have under the law, to speak freely about these important topics, and pay the state and the workers the penalties that they owe for the violations that they've already engaged in," Jahan Sagafi, a partner at Outten & Golden LLP, representing Bhakta, told The Register.

A similar case [PDF] against Google, filed in the same court, led to a $27 million settlement last year, split between staff and the state. This latest case could potentially prove similarly lucrative if successful.

Apple had no comment at the time of publication, but has reportedly said it intends to contest the case. ®