Google Accused of Developing System to Spy on Employees

Tech giant Google has been accused by employees of developing an internal surveillance tool designed to monitor its workers’ attempts to organize protests.

Bloomberg reports that employees at Google are now accusing the company’s leadership of working on an internal surveillance system designed to monitor employees’ attempts to organize protests which have become relatively common at the company.

The employees claim to have discovered earlier this month that a team within Google was tasked with creating a tool for the Google Chrome browser installed on company computers. The tool would automatically report employees who create a calendar event with more than 10 rooms or 100 participants according to a memo written by a Google employee.

The employee alleged in the memo that the most likely explanation for this tool “is that this is an attempt of leadership to immediately learn about any workers organization attempts.” A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg: “These claims about the operation and purpose of this extension are categorically false. This is a pop-up reminder that asks people to be mindful before auto-adding a meeting to the calendars of large numbers of employees.”

Google alleges that the development of the extension was prompted by an increase in spam related to calendars and events and doesn’t collect any personally identifiable information or stop the use of calendars. Tensions surrounding protests and worker-organized events have been rising for some time now.

Google’s office in Zurich held an event earlier this month related to workers’ rights and unionization, despite attempts by managers to cancel the event. Over the last 18 months, employees have protested how Google leadership has handled issues such as sexual harassment complaints and launched internal campaigns to end Google projects such as the censored Chinese search engine known as Project Dragonfly.

Employees internally have mocked the new Google tracking tool on message boards, with one employee posting a meme which featured an image of a group of men in suits laughing, with a caption stating: “And then we told them, ‘WE WILL NOT make it appear to you that we are watching out for your protected concerted activities’ as we pushed a Chrome extension to report when someone makes a meeting with 100+ people.”

Another meme featured the Harry Potter character Professor Dolores Umbridge, who in the series had a number of ridiculous rules and regulations designed to shut down any dissent. The text on the meme reads: “Google decree number 24: no employee organization or meeting with over 100 participants may exist without the knowledge and approval of the high inquisitor.”