I FEEL YOUR EYES
Google spies to ensure confidentiality: worker suit
Google operates an Orwellian and illegal “spying program” to keep employees from leaking company information, a product manager at the search giant claims in a lawsuit filed against the tech titan.
The program, aimed at enforcing strict confidentiality agreements each employee signs when hired, prevents workers from anonymously contacting regulators as whistleblowers, the suit claims.
The employee, who filed the suit as a John Doe to minimize further damage, claims Google workers can’t even write novels based on their work unless company brass sign off on the work.
The suit lists 12 violations of state and federal labor laws and seeks up to $3.8 billion in damages.
Google said the suit, filed this week in a San Francisco state court, was “baseless.”
The unidentified employee claims Google guards its confidentiality so obsessively that it deprives its workers, or “Googlers,” of such basic constitutional rights as freedom of speech and freedom to work.
Google’s director of Global Investigations, Intelligence & Protective Services has already falsely informed Doe’s peers that he leaked informa- tion to the press, it is alleged.
The plaintiff claims he did no such thing, but rather was set up as “a very public scapegoat to ensure that other Googlers continued to comply with Google’s unlawful confidentiality policies.”
The case’s overarching ar- gument is that the company considers everything Googlerelated to be confidential.
This allegedly keeps Googlers from sharing their work experiences when seeking new jobs with other employers, from informing authorities about corporate wrongdoing and from “speaking to their spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job.”
Those failing to comply could fall prey to investigation-team “volunteers” — or fellow employees who are re- quired to report leaks to Google’s “Stopleaks” program or risk losing their jobs, according to the suit.
It also asserts the obsession with secrecy goes right to the top.
In one all-hands meeting, a Google co-founder (who was not identified by name) supposedly assured fellow Googlers that “anyone who ‘leaks’ ‘confidential information’ will soon be an exGoogler.”
“We’re very committed to an open internal culture, which means we frequently share with employees details of product launches and confidential business information,” a spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to The Post.
“Our employee confidentiality requirements are designed to protect proprietary business information, while not preventing employees from disclosing information about terms and conditions of employment, or workplace concerns,” the spokesperson added.
The Information, a technology publication, first reported on the suit.
Of the total $3.8 billion in damages, 75 percent is earmarked for the state of California and the rest would be spread among Google’s 61,000 “aggrieved” employees.
That amounts to roughly $14,600 per worker.