In a Leaked Memo, Apple Warns Employees to Stop Leaking Information (bloomberg.com)

Apple warned employees to stop leaking internal information on future plans and raised the specter of potential legal action and criminal charges, one of the most-aggressive moves by the world's largest technology company to control information about its activities. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based company said in a lengthy memo posted to its internal blog that it "caught 29 leakers," last year and noted that 12 of those were arrested. "These people not only lose their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment elsewhere," Apple added. The company declined to comment on Friday. Apple outlined situations in which information was leaked to the media, including a meeting earlier this year where Apple's software engineering head Craig Federighi told employees that some planned iPhone software features would be delayed. Apple also cited a yet-to-be-released software package that revealed details about the unreleased iPhone X and new Apple Watch. Leaked information about a new product can negatively impact sales of current models, give rivals more time to begin on a competitive response, and lead to fewer sales when the new product launches, according to the memo.

Comments

NDA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when companies force NDAs on business operations. I had one that said we couldn't talk about any aspect of the business, even though there was nothing to hide except corrupt business practices (which is probably the reason for it).

Re:NDA?

[Dutch Gun]

I work in the videogame industry, and so I've worked my entire career with the knowledge that absolutely everything I was working on was covered under the blanket NDA everyone signs before they're hired. There's a lot of people interested in the stuff we're working on, and so I guess human nature being what it is, it's hard not to tell people what neat stuff you see being worked on. But leaks tend to kill the careful marketing plan put in place for the game you may have spent several years developing.

So, I guess I'm sort of used to that. You simply don't talk about what you're working on unless you have express permission, or you risk get disciplined or fired. Given that there's a lot of interest in what Apple does, I can see why maintaining internal secrets is important to them as well.

I'm actually fairly impressed when I've worked at a company with several hundred people and there WEREN'T leaks. I can imagine how difficult that must be when you have many thousands of employees.

Re:Competitive Response

[JaredOfEuropa]

Apple could give users' files to the FBI, or sell access to detailed individual customer data to 3rd parties, but to our knowledge, they haven't. Facebook has sold such data to 3rd parties, it's pretty much their business model. Zuck deserves the shame he got, even from Cook

Why is this "news"?

[Kenja]

Name a company that doesn't ask their employees to protect corporate secrets.

Re:Gotta love it

[supremebob]

Knowing Apple, they probably added some sort of digital fingerprint to the memo so they could catch the leaker.

I hope that the leaker was smart enough not to forward the headers...

The Fruit Has Gone Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Apple diehard (been clean about 10 years now), I really can't believe what major league douche bags Apple has become. I only stopped using their computers because my university didn't support them on their network at the time, but between incredibly overpriced machines and devices, suing everyone under the sun and over matching them on lawyers, threatening and almost abusing employees on the regular, trying to intimidate everyone that has anything to do with them, making devices that are almost impossible to repair and then deliberately breaking third party repairs with software updates which seem to have no legitimate purpose and appear to only be pushed to break the repairs, spam dialing 911 from their repair centers and then not having any idea how to stop it, supporting terrorists (I'm all for protecting people's data and standing up to the man about it, but you lose your right to have your data shielded when you openly murder a room full of people), their general smugness about everything, and probably a few other things I'm missing, I am very glad that I haven't contributed a dime to them in the last decade. I think back to how awful M$ was in the '90s (and they're still not much better), and I feel like Apple has actually surpassed them in terms of shitty and abusive business practices. It would almost be impressive if it wasn't so horrifying.

Re:Competitive Response

[Anubis IV]

Apple doesn't claim to have decryption keys for everything that goes through iCloud, nor have they ever. Quite the contrary, in fact, since they explicitly state in their security white papers that they don't have the keys for much of it. For instance, iMessages, which go through iCloud, are end-to-end encrypted, with the sending device encrypting the message once for each receiving device. Likewise, FaceTime and many other services are end-to-end encrypted.

There are some things that they can decrypt (e.g. iCloud Backup contents, documents stored in iCloud, etc.), but those are mostly the items actually being stored there, rather than merely passing through it.

That must be why HomePod sales fell off

[93 Escort Wagon]

After all, it can't possibly be due to the high price or to Siri's limitations.

Yo Dawg!

[Subm]

Yo Dawg, I heard you liked leaking memos, so I leaked a memo about leaking memos so you could leak memos while you leak memos.

Re:Competitive Response

[UnknowingFool]

Except Apple has never claimed anything like that. The FBI claimed that. Apple can grant access to user's iCloud account given a warrant; however, the problem is that data on the phone is encrypted using device level keys that Apple does not have access nor ability to get.

In the San Bernandino case, the FBI wanted data off the phone. So Apple advised that they should allow the iPhone to automatically sync up and backup tothe iCloud account. Instead the FBI instructed the police to reset the password which then locked Apple and the FBI out of the phone's data.