Department of Labor Sues Google Over Compensation Data (cnn.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. The data request is part of a routine audit into Google's equal opportunity hiring practices, which is required because of the company's role as a federal contractor. Google provides cloud computing services to various federal agencies and the military. Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more. According to the lawsuit, Google has repeatedly refused to provide names, contact information, job history and salary history details that the government has requested for its employees. The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."

Comments

TFA missed two.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more.

Missed two biggies:

Age.
National origin.

Re: TFA missed two.

[Anonymous Coward]

National origin can somewhat be described by race

Hah. I was born in Joburg and have been an American citizen more than 20 years. I'm white as the day is long but I mark "African American" everywhere I can. I'm sure they've got me lumped in with the blacks on the national rolls.

Re: TFA missed two.

[dgatwood]

And bureaucrats everywhere are torn between the desire to chastise you for screwing up their numbers or praise you for being technically correct—the best kind of correct....

Re:TFA missed two.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing if they handed over the data it would reveal that they are actively discriminating against 40+ year-old straight white males.

Re: TFA missed two.

[silentcoder]

Don't be so sure. Hell South Africa managed to do appartheid without having race defined !
I'm not kidding you. They went through about 6 different attempts to define it in the early days - and ultimately settled on "you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member" - and had individual cases of dispute left up to judges who would rule when there were issues based on collecting a whole lot of personal data and witness statements from neighbours and the like.

In a few cases coloureds (the South African term 'coloured' means "mixed race" - it's more like what Americans once called "Mulatos") managed to cross the line and become legally white for example, and at least a few white people who lived in areas bordering coloured populations ended up being legally included in that race group. Oddly though there was the case of Johnny Clegg. Clegg was white-born in a Zulu area and fully and utterly adoped Zulu culture, and was accepted as a Zulu by the local tribe. Despite years of attempts though - he could never get legally classified as Zulu. Clegg is also one the best-selling musicians in the country's history so his case became very well publicised.

In 1986, in a desperate attempt to try and keep the system on life support the government instituted a number of reforms -believing they could keep the foundational appartheid system running if they curb the worst of it's excesses. These reforms got rid of several of the most racist laws and in some truly bizarre ways at times. For example it scrapped the immorality act (which prohibited sex or marriage across colour lines) but kept the group areas act - which meant that while you could now marry somebody of a different race, legally you and your new spouse could not live together !

But one of those reforms completely scrapped racial classification and definition. The 1986 election was the last true whites-only election in the country in fact, and had there been another appartheid election it would have been very hard to keep black people from voting since legally they didn't exist anymore. That they somehow managed to keep the segregation laws going while not legally classifying people at all made it all rather surreal - even by appartheid government standards. They also insituted a new tricameral parliament. The two additional houses of parliament had one which ruled over coloured affairs and one which ruled over Indian affairs (no representation for black's still - despite being 80% of the population) and they had no real power anyway as the white-chamber could veto any law they passed.
This was the beginning of the end of the system anyway. The government grew ever more paranoid and the country was effectively in a never-ending state of emergency. Always quite censorious and masters of propaganda it got stepped up to never before seen levels and even flagrant dishonesty - the government fought a ten year war in Angola while denying to the population that it was at war at all ! It was "just guarding the border of Namibia" it said... this was a bit of an open secret though - you can't have thousands of soldiers serving and coming home without some of them talking about where they really were.

That president P.W. Botha basically went crazier and crazier - and after a minor health-scare in 1989 the party essentially held a coup from the inside, claiming he had, had a severe stroke they removed him from office before he could wipe the shit from his eyes and gave the presidency to F.W. De Klerk who abolished all remaining appartheid laws, freed Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners and announced a negotiation process to ultimately lead to elections in a unified South Africa where all could vote - all in his very first speech (February 29, 1989).

There was one last desperate attempt to ressurrect the system. In 1992 the rightwing parties (who held a considerable number of parliamentary seats) were clamoring that the National Party had no right to end the system, negotiate with the ANC (and other

Re: TFA missed two.

[Anonymous Coward]

"you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member"

And that is the real definition of race. Lots of people think race is genetic, but the one group that has near unanimous agreement that race is not genetic are actual geneticists. For example, Dr Craig Venter (founder of the Human Genome Project) says, "Race is a social concept, not a scientific one. We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world."

Turns out there is more genetic diversity within commonly defined racial groups than there is between them. An illustration of this fact:

In one example that demonstrated genetic differences were not fixed along racial lines, the full genomes of James Watson and Craig Venter, two famous American scientists of European ancestry, were compared to that of a Korean scientist, Seong-Jin Kim. It turned out that Watson (who, ironically, became ostracized in the scientific community after making racist remarks) and Venter shared fewer variations in their genetic sequences than they each shared with Kim.
Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

Another example is that it was only within the last 130 years or so that italians, germans, french, irish and even swedes were considered "white." Here's Ben Franklin expressing the commonly held beliefs of his time:

the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.
Benjamin Franklin, "Observations Concerning the Increasing of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, &c." (Boston: Printed by S. Kneeland, 1755)

Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[taustin]

Can't they?

Google, the company running the most all-pervasive surveillance system in all of human history, is fighting to protect their own privacy?

Not that I needed another belly laugh, after the last election, but dude, that's funny.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaywardGeek]

I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else? Google fights harder than any company I know of against government over-reach and invasion of privacy (though kudos to Apple recently, other than that NYT app in China thing). I don't know any details, and IANAL, but this feels to me like Google is looking out for our privacy rather than trying to hide hiring practices. Do you want to give your details to these investigators? Why not anonymize the data? I see almost zero non-anonymous data at Google. The government should learn a few of these tricks.

As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.

As for discriminating against women, older folks, etc... well, we're a company made up of humans, just like the rest. There's room for improvement. Before working here, I worked primarily in FPGA place and route algorithms, which is a field with AFAIK exactly zero women. Please let me know if I'm wrong, and managers don't count, I mean the actual algorithms geeks. I read somewhere that we only employ something close to 15% women in engineering/software jobs, but when I look around, I see closer to 30% women. It might just be my group, but I think we try pretty hard to expunge 1960's Star Trek inspired sexist attitudes. As a 53-year-old, I have to try pretty hard to try and eliminate unconscious biases - which is hard! I don't know of any other company that demands this of older engineers like me. It's a very good thing.

Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaywardGeek]

I seriously doubt it is that simple. Google lawyers don't talk generally to anyone outside Google, but when I get upset at them for something that seems incredibly stupid to me (most recently, their rejection of software with a CC0 license), I get an earful of detail and justifications that would make your head spin. AFAIK, it's not Google lawyers that are messed up, but the system in which they have to do their jobs. From what I can tell, most of them are trying to fight the good fight, and not be evil.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaffleMonster]

As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.

NSA offers roughly the same message only they claim collecting data doesn't actually count as "collecting" until it has been used. They are basically asserting it isn't what you have it is what you do with what you take that counts.

This doesn't work for money stolen in bank heists or scams, exfiltration of confidential data such as trade and government secrets. It doesn't seem rational to believe any judge anywhere would accept the line of argument you didn't use what you took as a defense...

NSA brass even makes public statements about all of their safeguards and red tape... at least when they are not undermining themselves by publically gloating about their power and exploits.

Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...

Personally speaking for myself I just don't care. Just like NSA collecting data domestically such assertions of being careful and self-limiting completely misses the point it's simply none of Google's business in the first place.

Massive corporations (especially ones with a defacto monopoly) and governments always try to sell the idea they are somehow different or special insulated from historical examples of human nature. They want us to believe they won't overreach or leverage themselves in pursuit of their objective functions. I am not interested in debating this point or characterizing anyone as good or evil.

I am only interested in promotion of structures which hold EVERYONES feet to the fire. This means a few massive companies like Google don't get to go ape shit and read everyone's email and track everyone's every move across virtually every website on the planet whether Google is their search engine or not.

This behind the scenes industrial scale spying relies mostly on ignorance and lack of choice. All of this data ultimately isn't being used for everyone's benefit it is being used to give corporations an upper hand over consumers -- an unfair advantage, an unfair playing field. They don't want *their* feet burnt.

Hopefully soon with increasing public awareness, certain hidden technological changes and possibly legislation there will be adjustments to better balance things out. The status quo is unsustainable and Google is at the forefront of being the problem.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, now I see. It's the Google legal drones paying for slashdot shills.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[WaywardGeek]

Yep. It isn't so bad in Mountain View, but have you been to SF lately? It isn't just Google. The entire SF hipster startup culture in SF is highly youth-oriented, and I worry that the culture may be more sexist than what we've seen in the Bay Area since the 1960s. What happens when you give a bunch of 20-year-old men a lot of money, and a great dating scene with far more single women then men?

In any case, there are some good reasons for Google's preference for hiring people right out of college. I am still recovering from culture-shock. It would have been far easier for me to have gone to work for Google without having worked for startups for 25 years. When I see stupid stuff that I can fix, I feel compelled to fix it. That works well in small companies, but it will only piss off people at Google, and ensure you get a poor review. I advise nooglers with experience like me to try and ignore what that they learned before.

Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Google refuses to abide by the contract, the DoL has the right to request a contract termination because Google has technically breached it.

They Dept of labor is not suing to terminate the contract though. They are suing to get private information which, after it is in their hands, can be used by any government department. And this information is MORE than what the IRS would get. Getting salary history and career history essentially means information on how people moved from position to position. This would give the government information on which projects each Google employee ever worked on and their phone numbers (which IRS may not have), street addresses, and probably all email aliases (which IRS definitely did not have). And this is the government which sold state influence secrets to unfriendly nations. So Google is within their rights to question their motives.

Why did it come to this

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not understand why google has not complied. I get it if they do not like the request, I wouldn't like it either, but they signed for those contracts and agreed to these terms so they could get paid.

Quite frankly at a certain point an example needs to be made.

I see this kind of disregard for the law and for contracts etc and it's getting much worse. We need to publicly kill a large corporation, and we need to do it in a very messy painful way. We need to do this to bring the others into line.

Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line. We need to kill sony for infecting multiple countries with rootkits, or subway for poisoning our population, or walmart for actively encouraging child slave labor, or google for failing to comply with legal contractual obligations.

One must die that we may all live, this is the way of the harvest and we know it, now we just have to pick one to kill by revoking their corporate charter and disassembling their physical business structures.

Re:Yeah, this will last about 2 weeks

[Waffle Iron]

When Trump is in this will get canned,

Not after they tell Trump that Google is discriminating by hiring furrinors in preference to natural born umericans.

It's the right time!

[hcs_$reboot]

If you're over 50 years old and looking for a job at Google , apply now!

Probably a Witch Hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

We're a government contractor. We get audited. We've NEVER been asked for as much data as they're asking google. This is almost certainly a witch hunt.

Re:Yeah, this will last about 2 weeks

[swb]

You're making jokes about this, but how do we know that this isn't exactly what Google is most worried about?

I mean, if you were going to just hazard a wild guess based on the usual stereotypes you'd figure Google skews young and male in engineering but does better overall in gender when marketing and other soft skills positions are included. You could talk to anyone in technology and get this same mix described to you like the people involved were talking about the weather or the sun rising in the East. Just the way it is.

But when it comes to race and national origin, I'd guess they skew heavily Indian and Asian but extremely light on blacks.

That's a bad combination for this zeitgeist. Not hiring enough blacks exposes you to all the usual discrimination claims and I'm sure BLM would love a target like Google.

But the real zinger will be the heavy hiring of Indians and Chinese and they don't want Trump ranting on Twitter (a competing service!) about how they're not hiring Americans.

And if Trump had half a brain, he'd say that part of why blacks are doing poorly was that Google was hiring Indians over them. It's ludicrous, I know, but it's political genius because it deflects Trump's alt-right image and it pits blacks against Indians. It's classic divide and conquer.