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Apple call center workers fear AI-powered surveillance cameras in their homes
- cebert 5y agoI understand that Apple isn’t directly responsible for this policy and a contracted firm is primarily responsible. However, this press couldn’t have came at a worse time when Apple is also facing negative PR resulting from their announcement of expanded protections for children.
- smoldesu 5y agoFor what it's worth, Apple is a very deliberate company with immense control over their supply chain. Surveillance could very well be their internal MO, we have no way to hold them accountable in that regard. Considering how they want to generate low-resolution hashes of your content on-device before it's shipped off to their servers... yeah, I can see the two aligning. It's part of a larger, internal push to increase liability and weed out "bad actors"
- samename 5y agoYeah, for a company like Apple, I would hold them responsible for the contractors actions here. Apple could easily replace them if they wanted to.
- pc86 5y ago"negative PR resulting from...expanded protections for children" is an insanely generous paraphrasing of what actually happened...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xanaxagoras 5y agoAgreed, we should stop ceding the language we use to describe this betrayal of trust to Apple’s idiot marketing division. These aren’t child safety features. By the time CSAM has been produced the child has already been harmed. Also pedophiles, may they be tortured barbarically and may their barbaric torture be televised by mandate on all those little TV screens that squawk at us while we’re getting gas until every last one of them is too scared to ever go near another child again, will simply turn off iCloud photos, or iCloud, or whatever 3rd parties Apple will let in on the surveillance. This will not help keep a single child safe. It’s not a child safety feature, it’s an adult surveillance feature.
- shadilay 5y agoWell said. If Apple wanted to keep children safe they would fund investigations into allegations of child abuse.
- kalleboo 5y ago> will simply turn off iCloud photos, or iCloud, or whatever 3rd parties Apple will let in on the surveillance I mean apparently they're already uploading photos to Facebook of all places and getting caught there, so you may be overestimating how smart they are.
- Dylan16807 5y agoNormally the conflation isn't a big deal, but if you're going to be that vitriolic, I'm going to please ask you to say "child abuser" and not "pedophile". What pedophiles need is therapy and possibly monitoring.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xanaxagoras 5y agoIs there data on how effective therapy is for pedophiles? Intuitively I'd expect it enjoys the same 0% efficacy rate as gay conversion therapy.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoSorry, you mean spying on everyone?
- Lammy 5y ago*better time
- petre 5y agoThey are responsible as long as they have a contract with that company. Otherwise it's denying responsability by using contractors.
- jgaa 5y agoYou mean the mandatory Personal Informant app that Stasi left on it's wish list?
- perihelions 5y agoThe telescreens from 1984 have arrived! Just like in the Apple commercial. Be aware that Albania is currently not a EU member [0], so none of the EU privacy laws apply (although per the linked NBC article, this proposal is illegal in Albania too [1], so I don't know what that company thinks they're doing). BTW, this is technically a dupe from two days ago [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Albania_to_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Albania_to_the_Eu... [1] https://www.idp.al/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Rekomandim_nr_27_AMSSHT.pdf https://www.idp.al/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Rekomandim_nr_... (Albanian-language pdf) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28113304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28113304 ("Big Tech call center workers face pressure to accept home surveillance")
- echelon 5y agoWho knew a luxury brand device manufacturer would usher in the Orwellian future? It didn't take big brother. People willingly lap it up. The ecosystem that works together turned into an inescapable dragnet. That's the cost of letting the giants grow so big.
- smnrchrds 5y agoEven in 1984, it was said that many people willingly bought televisions. I vaguely remember a character saying he wanted one but couldn't afford it.
- jakear 5y agoThat’s why Brave New World is a much stronger prediction. People don’t want the State to take their Freedoms because that’s not American. But when a Lucury&Socialization brand comes and promises to make your life Better for the low price of your excess brainwaves… lovely! Sign me up for soma that.
- emsy 5y agoI hate when someone says „BNW is actually a better prediction“ (you also never hear it the other way around). Both works are pretty much orthogonal e.g. we can have the NSA spying on citizens AND the hedonistic complacency from BNW simultaneously.
- yuppie_scum 5y agoIts the best job seeker’s market in decades. Get another job if you’re unhappy
- cebert 5y agoThis article mentioned the call center employees work out of Bogota, Colombia. According to routers the current unemployment rate is over 17% there. It may not be so easy for them. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/colombia-employment-idUSL2N2OC1YJ https://www.reuters.com/article/colombia-employment-idUSL2N2...
- dylan604 5y agoSure, that's an option, but then the next person will still have to deal with it. And you can do that but while making arrangements why not make some noise about it too? Maybe things will change, maybe they won't, but if you're already one foot out the door, "what can they do, fire me?"
- b9a2cab5 5y agoBecause when this happens en masse, they won't have enough "next person" to get work done, so they raise wages. That's how a market works (see: low wage jobs in the US now).
- upbeat_general 5y agoWith that logic, why have any worker protections at all? The market will always sort it out!
- LocalH 5y agoSo they start giving out meaningless gewgaws to get people to apply ("free iPhone 12 Pro Max on hiring!") instead of actually paying living wages and benefits
- dylan604 5y agohow long does one need to work there before being fully vested and not required to give the phone back? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year? 2 years (like a phone contract)? I might go work for burger king for a day for a new phone as long as I got to keep it after that day. Any longer than that would be a nope.
- aunty_helen 5y agoTeleperformance is one of the worst companies I’ve ever come to know. Besides paying terribly (think less than 2 USD/hr), they’ve stole wages by way of metric manipulation, denied vacation entitlements, restricted the amount of bathroom breaks, forced 10-13 hr days where you get 2 hours of lunch break (yay but actually they just don’t need you for that time but you’re stuck at work), trying to force people into wfh… you get the picture. It makes you appreciate first world employment comforts because this is a company that will happily take any advantage it can.
- hellbannedguy 5y agoI wouldn't mind seeing a federal law stating that any internet company doing business in the USA has to pay workers minimum wage. Only large companies. Small companies would be exempt. I despise most regulations, but wouldn't mind regulating big companies a bit more.
- 3np 5y agoThat exemption would make the law useless (trivially circumvented through one more layer of subsidiaries and contractors)
- shadilay 5y agoThe law can count for subsidiaries and contractors too. No number of layers of corporate shell can stop the workers who need to say "You've reached Apple support, how can I assist you?".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jakear 5y agoWhy should low cap business owners be able to exploit foreign laborers just because they’re low cap?
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- xanaxagoras 5y agoMight as well, the jig is up. Apple has shed their privacy facade, why not go all in on surveillance?
- mastrsushi 5y agofear I am in fear for my loved ones. I am hiding under my blanket.
- rubatuga 5y agoEveryday I realize that the reason we're hitting all these dystopian practices and rules is because tech is trying to scale things that don't scale.
- hughrr 5y agoThat’s actually a really interesting perspective.
- tomaskafka 5y ago“Can we remove people from all the loops everywhere? It will be so much cost effective!” “Gee, I wonder how the world became so dehumanized?”
- mouzogu 5y agoCompanies like this that depend on large MNC fixed contracts have limited capacity to grow or innovate. They provide a basic service at a fixed annual fee. So they grow by cutting from their employees. Remember a similar situation in India when employees went berserk, rightfully so.
- exikyut 5y agoNow I'm really glad Hyundai bought Boston Dynamics :D Plot of I, Robot foiled for a few more years...
- petre 5y agoI'd be awry of a Korean conglomerate buying an advanced robotics company after what happened to Samsung TVs that watch you while you're watching. Seems like privacy protection laws are toothless in Korea.
- cable2600 5y agoIs this called Proctoring? My son went to college and because of COVID they had his math class online. In order to take a test he needed a web camera to watch him and he had to show the room he was in was empty and they assigned a person to proctor him during the test to make sure he wasn't cheating. Now they are doing this with remote workers but using AI instead of people?
- zimpenfish 5y agoEveryone seems to have missed that Apple specifically ban contractors like Teleperformance from doing this. [include] Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy said that the company “prohibits the use of video or photographic monitoring by our suppliers and have confirmed Teleperformance does not use video monitoring for any of their teams working with Apple.” Leahy said that Apple had audited Teleperformance in Colombia this year and did not find any “core violations of our strict standards.”
- FlyingSaucer 5y agoThis is from my own experience working at a TP call center, for a major tech client and not in Albania or Colombia. External and internal audits are known for weeks in advance such that they could put a facade on in time. During audits you suddenly don't have a limit on bathroom break time (generally an alert would come at 15mins per day) and there would be pizza at the office every other day. Only 'loyal' employees would be chosen to any interviews/meetings about culture etc.
- mouzogu 5y agoIsn't this why many companies outsource. They can get away with these shenanigans whilst keeping a level of distance and feigned unawareness.
- Bombthecat 5y agoPlausible denieabilty.
- Closi 5y agoThis title is misleading at best - Apple call centre workers may fear AI-powered surveillance cameras, however Apple is not doing this, nor is the subcontractor on the Apple contract, as Apple has explicitly banned their subcontractors from doing this.
- aunty_helen 5y agoJust to be clear, each contract that Teleperformance has opperates with differerent rules and pay scale / entitlements etc. If you were working one of their other contracts, you may not even be in the same building as the others. So the Apple ai camera thing is probably specific to Apple as I know a few people who work there in Colombia and don't have cameras when they work from home.
- Closi 5y agoIt’s the opposite which is why the title is misleading - the “Apple ai camera thing” is happening on other Teleperformance contracts but not Apple. The idea that there is an “Apple ai camera thing” is just the implication from the (misleading) title but it doesn’t exist. From the article: > Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy said that the company “prohibits the use of video or photographic monitoring by our suppliers and have confirmed Teleperformance does not use video monitoring for any of their teams working with Apple.” The article also never makes the claim that the cameras are observing people doing work on an Apple contract - it says that it is Teleperformance who ‘has contracts with Apple’, but not that this is used on the Apple contract.
- aunty_helen 5y agoWe're not reading the same article bud. It clearly states this is the Apple account and that Apple UK had the same issues with their Albanian branch. > a Bogota-based worker on the Apple account ... said that she signed the contract ...because she feared losing her job. > the new contract, first issued in March. The contract allows monitoring by AI-powered cameras in workers’ homes, voice analytics and storage of data collected from the worker’s family members, including minors > the contract, a copy of which NBC News has reviewed You think NBC are gona headline an article risking defamation when they have a contract that would or would not state if this is a legitimate proposal??? Your comment reads like a complete misdirection.
- kgin 5y ago“ Apple outsources some of its call center work around the world to Teleperformance, and employees say they are being pressured to sign a contract agreeing to the cameras, despite an Apple policy prohibiting it”