So the author was managing a small team and was hold by her manager to get rid of one of her reports because she was pregnant. Now we know why management consists of psychopaths, those who are not evil quit in disgust.
I thought this is about emotional upheaval and hating big corporations, not the law.
If it is about the law, why even discuss it, instead of waiting for the courts to sort it out?
At my last job I was a contractor and took over a retired employee's desk/duties. She has apparently quit doing any actual real work months before and was just doing a small percentage of her work and not documenting what random bits she had actually been doing, I spent 2 months just trying to sort it out with the agency complaining to my employer that I wasn't doing anything, despite the fact I had literal boxes full of printouts and every surface in my cubicle covered, including most of the floor, with stacks of spreadsheets and records trying to figure out what she'd move from what account to which accounts going through highlighters like crazy highlighting stuff once i was confident a specific line for a specific office for a specific month for a specific bill had in fact been moved out of the field office account into the main GSA account for that type of entry, all while trying to keep up on the incoming stuff.
Marry that issue with things like Project Dragonfly and that whole debacle. Now remember that the goog knows everywhere your phone has been at 4 am for the last 7+ years, a lot of your emails, and a lot of your photos too.
That 'private data' that you though was harmless is not looking to be so harmless in the hands of people that would do the kind of things that the article mentions.