Ex-employee sues Apple for ‘surveillance’ after being forced to edit LinkedIn profile

Media outlet Semafor has publicized a lawsuit by a former ad tech employee at Apple who is suing the company for “physical, video electronic surveillance.” The story falls under the headline “Employee lawsuit accuses Apple of spying on its workers,” although the actual details are less tantalizing.

Semafor summarizes the situation:

The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.

In sum, Bhakta was forced to edit his LinkedIn profile and couldn’t leverage his personal brand through public speaking while being paid by Apple. Now he blames Apple for a fruitless job search. Does suing your former employer over broad privacy violation accusations increase your prospects on the job market?

For Bhakta, it’s a bet worth making, I suppose. The lawsuit argues that personal privacy is only preserved when using Apple-issued hardware and work-only iCloud accounts. So why not just do that if concerned? Work-only iCloud accounts are actively discouraged.

My guess is this lawsuit goes nowhere fast as it seems to rely on hypotheticals based on privacy policy and not actual examples of electronic surveillance. Thoughts?

Follow Zac: X, Bluesky, Instagram / Shop Apple on Amazon to support my work 🙏