Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz wouldn’t recognize an understated argument if it politely coughed, tapped him on the shoulder, and then promptly blew his face off with a bazooka, so it’s no surprise that his latest post about the so-called “Apple Gestapo” Godwin’s itself from the start. It’s a hysterical and stupid overreaction to the practices Cupertino employs to maintain secrecy about upcoming products.
But even so, it’s worth a gander, because while Diaz’s interpretations of Apple’s procedures are utterly facile, it’s still a rare and unique look at exactly how Apple manages to keep some of the most widely anticipated products in the consumer electronic market quiet, year after year.
According to Gizmodo’s tipster, when Apple suspects a department of leaking new developments, they deploy the “Worldwide Loyalty Team” to investigate. Once deployed, the Worldwide Loyalty Walks into a department and informs the manager, who instructs all employees to stay at their desks. All cell phones are then confiscated department wide; if it’s an iPhone, its data is quickly backed up to a laptop, while if it’s another brand of phone, it is manually inspected. Employees are not allowed to use their computers during this time, or place any outgoing calls. If the Worldwide Loyalty Team confirms that an employee is leaking product details, they are asked to stay until the end of the day, then quietly escorted from the building by security.
Okay, we’ll admit it: this sounds a bit Draconian. But let’s keep something in mind. Apple employees almost certainly give Apple explicit permission to do all of this when they sign their employee contracts. You sign your privacy away during work hours when you get a job at Apple. If you don’t want to give up your cell phone privacy when you step through Apple’s doors, you go work for another company.
This doesn’t even sound that out-of-line with what I’ve heard happens at other big tech companies working on secret projects when internal leaks are suspected. Keeping news about upcoming products from leaking early — thus giving competitors time to react — is serious business, after all.
Do I think this is the way an office should work? I don’t. It’s why I would never work for a company that wanted me to sign a contract giving them the right to search my cell phone. I think it’s reprehensible… and if Diaz had said just that, I would have agreed with him.
Predictably, though, Diaz takes it way too far: “[This feels] like a description of the Gestapo, without the torture and killing part,” he writes.
LOL. What? Let me rephrase that just to make the absurdity crystal clear. In other words, Diaz is saying that Apple is exactly like Nazi Germany, except without all the genocide or persecution or attempt at world domination or political adherence to national socialism or any of the other things that anyone thinks about when they talk about the Third Reich. No, he’s just talking the part where Nazi Germany sometimes wanted to take a look at your text message history.
What the heck was your point again, Jesus?
