Apple Surveillance & Speech Case

“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.”

-Complaint, Bhakta v. Apple

Individuals have a broad right to personal autonomy. As described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this includes the right to privacy, the right to impart information and ideas (to speak), the right to practice a trade or profession, the right to wages for work, and the right to rest.  Apple claims it is deeply committed to respecting these rights in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which declares that business enterprises – like Apple – must “avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts through their own activities.”  Id.

Unfortunately, Apple’s “deep commitment” to human rights does not extend to its own employees.  Instead, Apple’s employment contracts, policies, standards and practices infringe and violate its employees’ rights. 

For example, as a condition of working there, Apple employees must:

1. permit Apple to engage in constant surveillance of them;

2. grant Apple unfettered access to non-work private life data;

3. permit Apple to use non-work private life data for business purposes;

Apple also places restrictions on its employees’ right to:

1.  impart information about working conditions, wages, and unlawful conduct;

2. engage in political activity that might be adverse to Apple’s interests;

3. practice their trade or profession by, among other things, planning to compete with Apple, soliciting former co-workers, or disclosing or using any information “not generally known outside Apple.”  

In addition, Apple enforces these adverse impacts on its employees’ human rights by:

1.  disciplining and terminating employees;

2. threatening employees; and

3. requiring employees to sign contracts through which Apple claims the right to claw back earned wages if an employee violates Apple’s rules restricting employee autonomy.   

As explained by Sir Thomas Erskine May one hundred and sixty years ago, and as written into the case law by the California Supreme Court fifty years ago:

Next in importance to personal freedom is immunity from suspicions and jealous observation. Men may be without restraints upon their liberty; they may pass to and fro at pleasure: but if their steps are tracked by spies and informers, their words noted down for crimination, their associates watched as conspirators,—who shall say that they are free? Nothing is more revolting . . . than the espionage which forms part of the administrative system of continental despotisms. It haunts men like an evil genius, chills their gayety, restrains their writ, casts a shadow over their friendships and blights their domestic hearth. The freedom of a country may be measured by its immunity from this baleful agency.’ (2 May, Constitutional History of England (1863) 275.)

 -White v. Davis (1975) 13 Cal.3d 757, 776. 

Apple, a recognized leader in the protection of human rights, should afford employees the same deep respect for their human rights that it claims to afford to others.  Instead, Apple, through a spokesperson, responds with disagreement and denials. 

For all these reasons, and pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), a complaint in the case of Bhakta v. Apple has been filed in the Santa Clara Superior Court, seeking civil penalties and injunctive relief. 

If you have information about employment policies and practices that infringe or invade the rights discussed above, or are interested in participating with or assisting Plaintiff in furthering employee rights at Apple, contact us at 415.433.1064 or complete the on-line form on our contact page.