The article doesn't mention all of the alleged offenses regarding the lawsuit. There's definitely more than just a "spying program" here:
* Restrict the Googlers’ right to speak, right to work, and right to whistle-blow.
* Prohibit Googlers from speaking plainly – even internally – about illegal conduct or dangerous product defects, because such statements might one day be subject to discovery in litigation or sought by the government.
* Prohibit Googlers from telling a potential employer how much money they make, or what work they performed, when searching for a different job.
* Prohibit Googlers from using or disclosing all of the skills knowledge, acquaintances, and overall experience at Google when working for a new employer.
* Prohibit Googlers from speaking to the government, attorneys, or the press about wrongdoing at Google.
* The policies even prohibit Googlers from speaking to their spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job.
There were alleged training practices, policies, and documents outlining these offenses and they are written up pretty plainly in the suit itself[1]. Makes for better, more detailed reading, than this Engadget piece.
"Plaintiff brings this suit as a “Doe”
because Brian Katz, Google’s Director of
Global Investigations, Intelligen
ce & Protective Services, falsel
y informed approximately 65,000
Googlers that Plaintiff was terminated for “leaking”
certain information to the press. In fact, Plaintiff did not leak the identi
fied information to the press an
d Katz knew he did not. Rather,
Katz and Google used Plaintiff as a very public sc
apegoat to ensure that other Googlers continued
to comply with Google’s unlawfu
l confidentiality policies. "
According to B.Katz LinkedIn biography, he was a Special Agent and is using gov. intel grunt tactics on Google employees, much like special agents would when Obama/etc... cracked down on whistle blowers.
Looks like a revolving door hire, and if the suit is correct, then it has to cost Google a huge fine.
What is GOogle hiding they want a strong-arming Security Service Agent comfortable with making illegal threats running their grunt task force?
At large companies like MS, Google, or FB you can roughly divide security into "infosec" and physical security. The latter org will run everything from the door guards and video/badge infra to executive protection services and employee investigations. I am guessing that Mr. Katz runs this org at Google.
Sound like a total dick. Glad this wasn't a bar in Florida where you can conceal carry. Dude comes to some establishment and threatens employees and owner with criminal prosecution and filing criminal charges, then when they want to return the phone to the police, he would rather have it returned to them...
You shouldn't have been downvoted for that comment. According to the Wired article that broke the story (which RT apparently cut-and-pasted from without proper attribution):
this guy apparently was being an all-out, stereotypical SV dickhead, blatantly threatening a mere bartender (Barton) with criminal charges ("like I was in any trouble", as Barton says) -- just so he could save his own ass back at the Googleplex.
That's interesting, a clause in my contract (pulled up the PDF just now; dated prior to the suit in question) explicitly states that the confidentiality agreement does _not_ apply to my ability to discuss "terms, wages, and working conditions of employment, as protected by applicable law".
That certainly contradicts several of those points.
Well, in particular, that one line I cited from the confidentiality agreement makes me suspicious of claimed Legal Violations #6-8 (regarding disclosure of wages).
And certainly claimed Legal Violation #2 also falls flat when you consider that these are trade secrets protected by the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, and leaking trade secrets is illegal.
#3 and #4 is contradicted by the presence of the Protected Activity section in the same confidentiality agreement, which permit such activity.
I'm not about to comb through supporting documents just to disprove the rest of the claims; we have lawyers whose job is to do that. But since I can relatively easily find contradictions between what I have readily available and what the lawsuit is asserting, I have doubts that the underlying lawsuit really holds much weight.
The former Googler who started that spreadsheet faced retaliation from management for that spreadsheet, actually.
"Former Google employee Erica Baker revealed in a flurry of messages on Twitter Friday that she faced retaliation from management after compiling a spreadsheet of employee salaries."
That was one side of the story - presumably there is another side of the story. Since she left, there is another spreadsheet going around, and the maintainers are all still working at google AFAIK
Some of those are just not justiciable "using or disclosing all of the skills knowledge, acquaintances, and overall experience at Google when working for a new employer." is an obvious WTF
When they write 'Googlers' in the complaint...it just seems silly. Why not 'Google employees'?
Most of those bullet points seem completely reasonable.
Google instructs employees in its training programs to do the following:
“Don’t send an e-mail that says ‘I think we broke the law’ or ‘I think we violated this contract.’”
Yeah, that should be common sense, but there might be some talented yet socially-dumb engineers who need to be explicitly told that. Loose lips sink ships!
The only thing I find objectionable is the arbitration clause in the employment contract. That should be made illegal.
The whole point of ethics is to report ‘I think we broke the law’ or ‘I think we violated this contract.’ to your manager (maybe more, depending on the case) and for your own good (protection from prosecution) you should leave papertrails (emails for instance) that you did so.
How is it acceptable for a company to encourage employees to hide bad (or illegal) behavior ?
I think it's more people speculating about another team or project.
For example "I bet we'll get boatloads of patent disputes from Samsung if we get the next Nexus phone made by LG", said by someone on the Google search team who is just speculating based on public news reports.
Later in court, Samsung could use that as evidence that someone in the company had knowledge of violating patents (which increases damages 3x).
For a more concrete example, a Google engineer said that they should license Java for Android in an email (without having any sort of legal background on whether it was necessary), and this got dragged into court as evidence in the Oracle API copyright case.
Typically, the advice given in such contexts is to disclose concerns to your lawyer in the context of seeking legal advice. In the US (though this differs in some other countries) this makes it "attorney-client privileged" and thus protected from most kinds of legal discovery.
So the company is not saying, "Don't raise concerns about illegality." They're saying, "Don't raise them to your manager, but instead to the legal team."
Large companies tend to set up internal processes for such complaints to ensure that they go to the right people (i.e. your manager is probably not the right person anyway) and that they remain legally privileged when possible.
Based on the news reports (and not the content of the suit), it seems to me the filer is not aware of what is common (and frankly not worrisome) behavior at large companies. People get fired for leaking product details; legal discussions should happen with lawyers; companies commonly have contracts prohibiting discussion of wages but those contracts are usually unenforceable because in the US labor relations regulations actually protect such actions from retribution.
If an employee sees a violation of criminal law, does reporting it to his supervisor discharge any additional legal obligation to report it to law enforcement?
There is generally no legal obligation to report a violation of criminal law in most US jurisdictions. There are generally special cases for things like teachers and doctors to report child abuse, for example, but I can't think of any reason an employee would be legally obligated to report an employer's criminal activity.
This complaint seems pretty silly. Just taking a single point, paragraph 45:
“Don’t send an e-mail that says ‘I think we broke the law’ or ‘I think we violated this contract.’”
That seems like pretty reasonable training. You shouldn't put that on the record because you're not an attorney. You are just some Dork, or Senior Dork, or Staff Dork, or whatever grade of Dork you happen to be who is still not an attorney.
Maybe the attorneys also have to take training that advises them not to say "I think this dereference might be undefined behavior" in emails. Who knows.
Why not though? What's wrong with it? In the case where the employee is wrong then nothing happens besides, maybe, some negative news stories if it's leaked. That's reasonably controllable. On the other hand though, if the employee is actually correct, then the employer is protected from any claim they were informed about the illegal activity if employees don't use language that says they think wrongdoing is going on. Should employees work under threat of breaking rules designed to protect their employer if the employer is breaking the law? I don't think so.
One of the reasons is jury trials: such emails are discoverable and Google has first-hand experience with this in Oracle v. Google. Oracle brought an email sent by a non-lawyer technical Googler[1] and used it as evidence that Google knowingly infringed on Oracle's copyright. Googles lawyers had to go to great pains to deflect that line of attack (including asking the guy if he was a lawyer on the stand as Oracle's hostile witness).
Even if the email is wrong, it still looks bad to someone who does not understand the nuance of law, like members of the jury.
This is corporate policy to protect the corporation. It is power gone too far. People need to know that it's ok to speak up when something wrong occurs.
For example, If I were to see Jimmy stealing some GoogleBot servers then absolutely the company would want me to inform them about Jimmy's actions. Communication is largely done by email. So, there is no problem reporting illegal activity by email.
But, that's not what the corporation is fearful of, they are afraid of Jimmy's department which is infringing Big Corp.'s Patents. If I see this and email the company then the company has to respond with an inquiry to their lawyer and investigate, otherwise this could come out later in a court trial and cause financial harm. So the company doesn't want people to do what they believe is right. Oh sure, we can still report it verbally. But, that's absurd to have a policy that says email is fine for all communications except for anything that could potentially be detrimental to the company. What if I was harassed at work, I'm not supposed to say anything about that in email, it all has to be done face to face?
I hope this case wins, I hope that folks here understand that it's important to do what's right and not to do what their corporation tells them is right.
As I said above, most corporations advise employees to raise legal concerns to lawyers. This makes those concerns privileged and ensures the concerns go to people who can, you know, professionally evaluate them.
So I don't think you can reasonably say this is a case of companies not wanting illegality to be disclosed. It's wanting disclosure to take the proper form.
(Indeed, they have a vested interest in proper handling of illegality to ensure that higher-ups are aware of and can mitigate legal risks.)
As an engineer coming from a family of lawyers... engineers think they understand the law, but really they suck at it and when that shit does end up in court it looks really bad because it comes out in discovery.
that shit does end up in court it looks really bad because it comes out in discovery.
That's exactly my point. I'm asking whether or not an employer should write a contract that specifically states the employee should modify their behaviour to ensure things aren't discovered later - namely that the employer knew (or at least "was informed") that illegal things were going on. I don't think they should. If my employer wanted me to sign something that said "If you see things happening that you believe might be illegal, please keep quiet about it because you don't understand the law" I think I ought to say no.
> namely that the employer knew (or at least "was informed") that illegal things were going on
The problem is engineers lack a good grasp of how the law works compared to lawyers - sometimes the action is not illegal, but it will still looks bad after discovery. Leading to unnecessary settlements not as a matter of law, but of optics. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
> "If you see things happening that you believe might be illegal, please keep quiet about it because you don't understand the law"
That's not what they are saying - they are saying don't use email to do it. I mean would you appreciate it if your startup's first employee sends an email stating "We are infringing on these 18 Microsoft patents" on the record?
sometimes the action is not illegal, but it will still looks bad after discovery
So, are we discussing ethics or legality? If Google's official policy is one of "we like to skirt the law well into looking-bad territory, and that is fine" then they really need to abandon their "do no evil" motto.
I'll make an analogy: Engineers hate it when sales make commitments on behalf of engineering. Can you not imagine how lawyers might dislike engineers making legal commitments?
When dealing with people outside of the org, lawyers want from engineers what engineers want from sales - be vague and don't create obligations you do not fully understand. It is still perfectly fine for a sales guy to privately point out a bug - just don't shout it to the customer.
Can you not imagine how lawyers might dislike engineers making legal commitments
I think it takes a lawyer to believe "pointing out when the company you work for is breaking the law" is the same as "making a legal commitment", as if laws only apply if you acknowledge them. I'm realise that is essentially how the world lawyers live in works, but I think it sucks and I wouldn't want to sign a contract that forces me to be a part of it.
Most people in most areas don't know the law, so you can't point it out, you can only speculate.
Assuming you know the law when you never studied it is the problem. The idea is that you should be asking if something you think is questionable is legal or not. That's why companies have lawyers. It's about bringing it to the attention of the right people who can make the call and keep the company out of trouble, without saying something incorrect that you might have to testify about later.
You are being obtuse. The point is that an engineer can't authoritatively conclude that the company is breaking the law, so they shouldn't write it down.
How is it skirting the law? It seems more like "We (like everyone else) like to win court cases we may be in, and engineers providing unneeded or unfounded legal opinions over email makes it harder to win cases"
Your inability to understand this goes to OPs point about engineers not understanding law. I'm guessing you're an engineer(or at least - not a lawyer)
It's about the language used. You can absolutely cover yourself without directly implicating the company. Don't say "we're violating this and this patent", because even if you're technically not, it would look bad if that email were to come up in a patent lawsuit.
Engineers love to talk about legal issues as though they were lawyers. It turns out that with very few exceptions engineers are not lawyers. Now, saying things that aren't true in a discoverable medium is basically never a good idea; but drawing legal conclusions in one without having any real idea if you're right is the kind of bad idea that can cost your company a bunch of money. I'm sure the policy is aimed at cutting that kind of problem, rather than stopping legitimate whistleblowing etc (which is protected anyway).
Yes but everyday people are expected to know the law and obey it. You don't need to be a lawyer to know that assaulting somebody or driving dangerously is against the law.
If you know your company is "assaulting somebody" or something obviously illegal, I think you have a duty to let superiors know so that something can be done to fix it.
People are both employees and citizens and sometimes must choose between the company and thier own society at large.
1/ Your company could act legally and you think it is acting legally.
2/ Your company could act illegally and you think it is acting legally.
3/ Your company could act legally and you think it is acting illegally.
4/ Your company could act illegally and you think it is acting illegally.
Case 1 is fine and case 2 will spur no action from you, so we can discount those. Case four is protected under whistleblower laws, and you should get your own lawyer and only talk to them in no discoverable media anyway. Case three is where corporate policy applies and where you should probably not speculate in email because, well, you're wrong.
If you're on the fence between three and four, talk to a lawyer anyways and get off the fence. Find a firm legal footing and then pursue the issue.
Yes, you do have duty, but not in email. Full disclosure, I'm a Googler. And, thankfully every verbal complaint or concern I've made has been addressed and resolved.
Also, it's worth noting that no Google employee could say any view except this one in this thread without getting fired. (Likely even if the alleged terms weren't so egregious.) While you may be one of 65,000 who feels listened to, we can't know how many have been silenced.
It's not about you. When there is a claim of, say, systematic rape at a place, it is both understandable and really offputting for random people to say "I work there and didn't get raped." If anything, it comes across as kind of tone-deaf and toyish.
No, the point of such policies is so that if the company is ever gets sued and is subpoenaed for e-mails, the opposing counsel don't get to get in front of a jury and point to Joe Schmoe at the company writing 'Yep, I think we broke the law!'
This is standard employee training presumably not just at Google, but at basically every company I've ever worked for.
The rule goes basically: if you don't think what you write would look good on the front page of the NYT, then don't put it in an e-mail.
This sounds like somone brings up the email with "I think you are a moron" as an evidence in the psychiatric evaluation that the person is indeed a moron.
If person thinks something they should be able to express that and have a chance to be corrected if they are wrong.
Which can be argued against since you're not actually the attorney's client at the time of writing the e-mail, only the corporation is [1]. 'Some courts employ the Control Group Test whereby protection is available only to the corporation's controlling executives and managers.'
Doesn't seem like a risk a competent retained counsel would want to take, in any case.
According to the link, the control group test is diminishing in use, and if the employee has significant influence over the subject of the question (as a whistleblower or member of the team in question would), then they are in the control group.
The only way to really get screwed over by these tests would be to instate a "no emailing the lawyers about corporate wrongdoing" policy (causing your employees to fail all three tests in the link).
Of course, the lawsuit alleges that Google did exactly that. I wonder if the courts will (imho correctly) strip a large percentage of their internal legal communications of attorney/client privilege.
> This complaint seems pretty silly. Just taking a single point [...]
You cherrypicked one point out of the complaint, hence you cannot say anything about the validity of the entire complaint. Do the other points, summarized by randomdrake [1], also seem silly to you? And when considered as a whole (not as individual points), does it still seem silly?
Lol, you absolutely can not do that. That is sooo crazy. You actually have to encourage your employees to speak up when they see something is illegal. Of course everyone knows don't ever put that in email
Well, we are encouraged to speak up. We're also encouraged to use attorney-client privilege correctly (and trained to do so in the "You said WHAT?" training that the suit alludes to) -- email directly to the legal team, subject line clearly stating the desire to invoke attorney-client privilege, avoid CC'ing anyone else, etc.
Open invitation to Google employees: I can't imagine that the "You said WHAT?" training is somehow a trade secret. Post it. (On YouTube... lol)
The inherent problem with Googlers defending Google, beyond the obvious conflict of interest of expressing views about the company that writes your paycheck, is that Googlers expect us to trust them that the internal info they can't share isn't suspect.
If you can't share what's actually going on internally, you shouldn't be defending it. Let the case happen, with any luck these internal presentations, policies, and memos will end up in the public record, and we'll all be able to see what's really going on.
Personal attacks not welcome on HN? And "deranged theories" generally don't come with widespread sources and evidence, along with corroborating investigations by regulatory agencies all over the globe.
But no, I don't really expect any Google employee to engage with me on a matter that will almost certainly cost them their job to do so. As the article alleges, I strongly suspect publishing Google's internal training about confidentiality would eventually lead to someone's termination, even if it was described as being for another reason.
> Apparently, the tech giant has a “Stop Leaks” program in place that is managed through an internal website. Employees have the option of reporting a colleague to superiors, which then look into the matter and fire the whistleblower if the report is true.
Not all leaks are made in the sprit of "whistleblowing". This article seems pretty misleading… many of these measures are designed to protect the company's intellectual property and secrecy, though I see how they can be abused. I would hardly call it a 'spying program' though.
> If successful, the state would collect 75 percent of the penalty, while the rest would be paid out over to the company's 65,000 employees. Since there are 12 alleged violations in the suit, the maximum fine could amount to $3.8 billion, with each employee getting about $14,600.
That said, the headcount reported in Alphabet's last quarterly statement to investors was ~69k, but it depends what this 65k figure includes (temps / vendors / contractors? interns? past employees?). If it's just straight-up fulltime employees, then that's certainly not just California. And the payouts might vary from state to state -- a number of these claimed labor violations cite California law.
(Of course, I'm doubtful that any general payout is coming around.)
IANAL but skimming through the complaint, they're basically acting as a "private attorney general". The lawsuit alleges that Google's policies violate state law. Normally, the state would sue the company, but in this case, the law firm is saying that they'll handle the enforcement for the state. If they're successful, they get a percentage of the penalty.
I don't know how damages are divided up in cases like these, but I'd guess that the state's cut would be distributed (at least partially) to affected employees.
> Because Google requires Googlers to waive their right to seek class-wide injunctive relief for Google’s illegal conduct, the only effective remedy to address Google’s
illegal conduct is the aggressive and full imposition of penalties under the Private Attorneys General Act.
I'd be quite curious if that clause would hold up in court. Forcing employees to give up their right to seek relief for employer misconduct almost certainly is illegal... right?
The logic is punitive vs compensatory damages, medical malpractice is a good example: it's to prevent people trying to get rich by trying to get into malpractice situations and to not start futile suits just hoping for a payout. The idea is that if there isn't a massive payout at the end then the majority of lawsuits would be brought by people who were actually harmed by whoever they're suing and want justice more so than they want to get rich.
This way you reduce the incentive for futile suits and malpractice hunting while keeping the penalties harsh for those who do it.
Compensatory makes sense to go to the claimant but punitive not so much; it's purpose is to make financially unwise to keep whatever practices an entity was found guilty of.
Google has an incredibly secretive culture. Secrecy was drilled into us time and again. When collaborating with external vendors, it was quite painful to strike compromise between corporate secrecy and sharing enough information to be productive.
After leaving Google, I'm always amazed at what I'm allowed to talk about with vendors. I'll start talking in my Google-conditioned non-committal cagey way, and a colleague will remind me that I'm not at Google anymore, and I can just say what I mean.
Quite schizophrenic of the company to open up every information/book/news they can crawl and on the other hand close down the little interior world as much as possible. Not that this would be news or unexpected though.
"According to the lawsuit, Google’s policies don’t allow employees to discuss work-related topics including salaries, to post their personal opinions about the company online, and must not leak any product or other Google related information to the public. If Googlers break the company’s rules, they just might end up getting fired."
I have read several blog posts of Googlers about their work experience on their own blogs. If leaking unannounced works to the public, that's definitely a standard how work should be treated.
So I'd want to hear more about exactly what's going on. A "spy program" is a catchy phrase to grab reader attention. I think anyone should report if they spot anything against the interest of company such as insider trading, violate NDA etc, especially given Google is publicly traded.
My understanding is that employers may not hinder employees in discussing salaries among themselves, but may impose restrictions on providing salary information to non-employees.
So I can tell another Googler my salary but I can't tell you (unless you're a Googler) because my NDA forbids it. I'm pretty certain that I'm allowed to tell you that I'm not allowed to tell you, though. :)
There's an internal site where a number of Googlers share their compensation, anonymously or otherwise. I've never received any indication of disapproval or retaliation from management for being on it.
This is definitely untrue. I've worked at Google, and salaries were shared internally very much in the open. The official response was something like "we discourage sharing your salary because we think it's bad for the working atmosphere, but we won't stop you". I shared my salary publicly and there wasn't any form of retaliation.
I've seen several Google employees comment on this site even on matters related to Google. How do they bring up the courage to do this? Seems pretty risky as per this "Confidentiality Agreement".
>In addition, John Doe is also stating that Brian Katz, the director of global investigations, intelligence, and protective services over at Google, has falsely accused him of leaking information to the media.
Right, so I don't remember having any such language (don't disclose your salary or your work) in my departure paperwork. I was a SA in a SRE team. Does this apply to people in X?
That said, Google has a VERY restrictive IP a policy that effectively prohibits employees from running side businesses at ANY time during their employment on ANY medium, Google-owned or not. Anything you make is Google's.
"That said, Google has a VERY restrictive IP a policy that effectively prohibits employees from running side businesses at ANY time during their employment on ANY medium, Google-owned or not. Anything you make is Google's.
"
Actually, this is pretty much 100% false (I help run the invention assignment committee, so ...). We let it happen all the time, and in fact, grant people the IP to do it.
This is significantly better than most companies, who pretty much don't tell you, and then if you come up with something cool, will sue you and get it from you.
"The language in the IP agreement I signed said the exact opposite."
Did you actually attend the week two training we give entitled "open source and IP", that covers this in great detail?
"Engineers from the group I was in left because of this."
I would love to know who you believe left because of this. In the 11 years i've worked at Google, the vast majority of people i've seen leave in this situation left because they basically wanted to start a competitive startup, get the IP from google, and still get paid by google at the same time (quite literally).
The number of people who left for ideological reasons i can count on one, maybe two hands.
* Restrict the Googlers’ right to speak, right to work, and right to whistle-blow.
* Prohibit Googlers from speaking plainly – even internally – about illegal conduct or dangerous product defects, because such statements might one day be subject to discovery in litigation or sought by the government.
* Prohibit Googlers from telling a potential employer how much money they make, or what work they performed, when searching for a different job.
* Prohibit Googlers from using or disclosing all of the skills knowledge, acquaintances, and overall experience at Google when working for a new employer.
* Prohibit Googlers from speaking to the government, attorneys, or the press about wrongdoing at Google.
* The policies even prohibit Googlers from speaking to their spouse or friends about whether they think their boss could do a better job.
There were alleged training practices, policies, and documents outlining these offenses and they are written up pretty plainly in the suit itself[1]. Makes for better, more detailed reading, than this Engadget piece.
[1] - http://www.bakerlp.com/Google-Blackout-Case/2016-12-19-PAGA-...