They call themselves the Worldwide Loyalty Team. Among some employees, they are known as the Apple Gestapo, a group of moles always spying in headquarters and stores, reporting directly to Jobs and Oppenheimer. Here's how they hunt people down.Posted on 12/17/2009 3:54:24 AM PST by PaulAllen
They call themselves the Worldwide Loyalty Team. Among some employees, they are known as the Apple Gestapo, a group of moles always spying in headquarters and stores, reporting directly to Jobs and Oppenheimer. Here's how they hunt people down.
"You may want to know about their Worldwide Loyalty Team," Tom told me recently in an email. I read what he had to say. It felt like a description of the Gestapo, without the torture and killing part.
Tom never lived in Nazi Germany, back in the time when the Geheime Staatspolize had the power to get into any house or any office, at any time of the day or night, without any warrant or reason, to seize whatever or whoever they wanted in their never ending search to find enemies of the state. A place in which you had no right to privacy whatsoever. A place in which you were guilty until proven otherwise.
No, Tom never lived in Nazi Germany, nor in East Germany, nor in the Soviet Union, nor in Communist China. He lives in the United States. For sure, he has never been scared of losing his life nor the ones he loves, like thousands of millions in those countries. But he knows how it feels to be watched, to always be considered guilty of crimes against another kind of state. He knew how it felt to have no privacy whatsoever when he was working right here, in a little Californian town called Cupertino, in a legendary place located in One Infinite Loop.
Tom knew about all that pretty well, back when he was working at Apple Inc.
Of course, if Tom had never sent any sensitive information to media outlets, he would have never had the fear of being caught, only to get fired and sued into oblivion by Apple Legal. But the lack of any privacy whatsoever is something that he shared with all his fellow employees.
"Apple has these moles working everywhere, especially in departments where leaks are suspected. Management is not aware of them," he told me, "once they suspect a leak, the special forces—as we call them—will walk in the office at any hour, especially in the mornings. They will contact whoever was the most senior manager in the building, and ask them to coordinate the operation."
The operation, as Tom calls it, is not anything special. It is not one of a kind event. It's just a normal practice, and the process is pretty simple: The manager will instruct all employees to stay at their desks, telling them what to do and what to expect at any given time. The Apple Gestapo never handles the communication. They are there, present, supervising the supervisors, making sure everything goes as planned.
All cellphones are then taken. Usually, they collect them all at the same time, which means that the process could take a long time. If you need to contact the exterior during the time your cellphone is under examination, you will have to ask for permission, and your call will be monitored.
They don't ask for cameras because there are no cameras at Apple: Employees are not allowed to get into the campus with them. If the cellphone is an iPhone, it gets backed up onto a laptop. "In fact, at the beginning they used to say that the iPhones were really their property, since Apple gave every employee a free iPhone," he points out. All the employees are asked to unlock and disable any locking features in their cellphones, and then the special forces will proceed to check them for recent activity.
They back up everything and go through all the other phones' text messages and pictures. If you have porn in your phone, they will see it. If you have text messages to your spouse, lover, or Tiger Woods, they will see them, too. Just like that. No privacy, no limits.
While all this is happening, the employees are ordered to activate the screensaver on their computers, so the special forces are sure there are no chats happening between employees or with the exterior. They are told not to speak, text or call one other when the lockdown is happening: "It is like a gag order, and if the employee does not want to participate, they are basically asked to leave and never come back."
Of course, all this is voluntary. Management recommends that you relinquish your phones. If you don't do it they will fire you, or they will investigate why you didn't want to give them your cellphone. Simultaneously, everyone is asked to sign NDA's during the investigations, even though they already signed Apple NDAs to work there.
"I was at several events. When they find what they are looking for—which they usually do—the person is asked to stay until the end of the business day. Then he is asked to leave the premises quietly, escorted by security," Tom says. While he's there, the special forces hang around, watching. "There is a lot that goes behind doors that I don't really know about. I do know, however, that they really interrogate people that are serious suspects, intimidating them by threatening to sue."
There is no way to know how often this happens, however, as everything is handled very quietly. The same Worldwide Loyalty Team does many other things to keep everyone in check, from searching out the email history of every employee—which is also a normal practice in other corporations and government agencies—to seeding fake images to catch potential leaks and diffuse the hype about some product introductions.
As Tom was describing all this, my mind was getting back to all I've read about Steve Jobs and Apple, back when he was El Capitán of the brave group of free pirates who created the Macintosh. The Mac was a secret project too, but there was no secret police making sure there were no leaks. After a hard day of work, all the Mac team sometimes played on the beaches of California, careless and happy, confident that this new revolutionary computer would change the world, one desktop at a time. All of them shared information, there were no seeeecrets, and that's why they came up with an "insanely great" computer, as Steve Jobs himself used to refer to it.
And while I understand that secrecy is paramount to success in today's extremely competitive market—hello, dear marketdrones—now I look at this story on the Worldwide Loyalty Team, and it makes me realize how much Apple has changed. From a happy hippie company, to a company that does KGB-style lockdowns and Gestapo interrogations that end in suicides.
I highly doubt that Apple has engaged in any extrajudicial executions of people who leak such assets to the public. Apple has every right to keep a tight lip on its inner workings if that is what it wants to do and it has every right to use every legal means necessary to do it.
Just another good reason to avoid all things APPLE.
... and this ends my one-time experiment with Apple. never again
Pretty much par for the course for any company that deals with financial information, stock prices, proprietary information, etc.
In my last company they are called “Compliance”, as in “ensuring compliance with all security regulations — but everyone called them the “Men in Black”.
They played up on that too. Black or dark blue suits, sunglasses, and absolutely no sense of humor.
If three of these guys walked into the building, everyone knew an audit was going down and nobody was going to leave to go anywhere for the next six to 12 hours.
Then we can all hear how wonderful they run and how they are so superior that they don't even need virus protection and that they have never had a problem with anything ever, blah, blah, blah.
But remember, Apples have worms. And their computers have been a disappointment and an embarrassment over 2 decades.
I get some of everything you spend with Apple!
(Some rough language, but that will hurt their feelings none the less.)
Especially the part about if they run so f-ing great, then why do they bother having a “Fixyourmac.com website? That's hilarious!
LOL. That’s a keeper.
I have had PCs from 1985 to present.
In 2006 I bought a MAC G5 and have been almost trouble free with the MAC since I bought it.
With the PCs I had nearly daily crashes despite running up to date virus scans and regular weekly disk maintenance and Microsoft updates.
I very much doubt that I will ever buy another PC. I will pay a bit extra to be trouble free. I think that the hours I have spent on help lines with clueless Microsoft techs are better spent elsewhere.
But I grow weary of Apple (and their fanboi's) with their inferiority complex, arrogance, and condescension towards people who choose to use competing products.
For example, you'll see forums or blogs where someone posts a question about a problem with Windows (or Linux) and like clockwork some smart-ass Apple fanboi feels the need to reply with the tired "get a Mac" response. Shut up - you aren't helping anyone.
And these smug people don't seem to even realize that Apple products and licenses are among the most closed, proprietary products on the market. I can run Windows or Linux on hardware from any number of manufacturers, but you are totally locked into Apple-manufactured hardware if you want to run their OS, even though it is technically possible to run it on other hardware (see Pystar).
I am a software developer by profession and I looked at doing some software development for the iPod Touch. You can only do development for the iPod Touch using a Mac and their licensing severerly restricts the type of programs you can market for the iPod Touch. That's why there is no Java VM or Flash runtime for the iPod Touch/iPhone, unless you jailbreak the thing.
Honestly, I'd consider trying an Apple product, but the Apple culture is just revolting to me.
As for people who have PC's that "crash every day", I just haven't seen that. I reboot my system by choice every few weeks. I have one system here (a server running SharePoint Server, that is used heavily by 500 users) that has been up for 266 days without a reboot, and it was rebooted by choice 266 days ago.
I saw a comment here on this threat about horrible support from Microsoft, etc...
Well, as much as I hate to say it... Microsoft currently has about the best technical support on the planet. If your comment is about how horrible their support is, you haven't called them at all or since at least 1993.
Unlike Cisco or any other vendor I am forced to deal with, Microsoft has NEVER failed to resolve an issue I called them on.
don't get me wrong, I still think they are dirtbags.. especially with the new licensing mechanisms of late... but then again, this thread wasn't started about operating systems or applications, it was about Apple.
I'll say it again... even the 299.00 crappy POS e-machine my sister bought at Walmart came with a 1 year warranty. Where is Apple? Go check it out, basically you get 90 flippin days if you don't pay the hostage fee for "Apple care". IMHO, Apple sucks dirt. They sell 600.00 cell phones with no warranty. They monopolize pricing and sue anyone who questions their authority in coolness. I think they have awsome products with priority 1 focus on usability, it is obvious. But beyond that, they are as worthless as t... eh, you get it. I rank them right down at the bottom below Sony. My knock-off mp3 player, my PC and my motorola cell phone do me just fine for about 1/3 the cost.
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