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> Do you need to link your personal accounts with family photos and whatnot?

Nope. You can create a separate iCloud account just for work. I did that during my time there. I always maintained a separate work phone, and used work icloud account for that. The folks complaining are the ones who just didn't do that, and added 'work data' on their personal account, which ofcourse they will have to hand over if subpoenaed.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. To be frank, this twitter thread seems sensationalist if reality is closer to "I didn't bother to create a separate work account" rather than "Apple asked me to merge my personal account".

The original complaint also seems to put the blame on Apple but I would have to think that letting people start deleting stuff in discovery is not allowed, even if you swear it's personal and irrelevant to the case.

I'm curious about this. It's 'not allowed' explicitly by the judge? Can the employee be charged with 'evidence tampering' even if the judge didn't issue any order that explicitly prohibits the employee from deleting their files?

I think the concern is that the employer could be accused of destroying relevant evidence in that case. If I’ve understood the tweets and the Wikipedia article on e-discovery correctly, these photos went through the preservation phase but likely were not actually handed over to the other party since relevance is a factor before that happens.

I find it harmful to jump to a conclusion too early and blame the victim. Forcing someone to merge these accounts can take many forms and Apple has thousands of different teams and managers.

Even if there was zero explicit or implicit force in place, the circumstances can still be non-obvious.

If you get handed a MacBook, you're basically forced to work with an iCloud account. And the fact that making the mistake of using your own one in the high-pressure situation of a first day in a massive company is apparently a non-reversible decision that hands over data that was created before and outside the employment definitely points towards Apple abusing their position of power here.

> hands over data that was created before and outside the employment definitely points towards Apple abusing their position of power here.

Trust me, Apple legal would rather not dig through your personal information to find nuggets to hand to opposing counsel during discovery.

But if there's work information in your personal account, and Apple is legally compelled to go through accounts with work information as part of discovery... what's going to happen?

People will call them awful and disrespectful, for not providing explicit instructions to use a new or work account, and warning everything in the account may be impounded.

New hires at Apple get multiple hours of training in information security and other HR policy. There is warning. It's just ignored by lots of folks.

> I find it harmful to jump to a conclusion too early and blame the victim.

The only victims I can possibly see here are those employees that had to review nude images inappropriately stored on a work computer.

Apple absolutely does not require that you use your personal iCloud account on your work machines, and any professional should know that it is inappropriate to browse, share, or store nude photos (of anyone) on company-owned hardware, and should never have placed their colleagues in a position of having to deal with those images.

Everyone has days of lax judgement: Excitement over a new job can do this. Anxiety, depression, a sick child, yourself being sick, recent marriage, a big move, and a slew of other things can do this.

Apple should be in the position to instruct new employees to create an icloud account for work alongside explaining that the computer they are handed must be turned in at times. The employees aren't the only ones with responsibility here.

> Anxiety, depression, a sick child, yourself being sick, recent marriage, a big move, and a slew of other things can do this.

Maintaining a modicum of personal responsibility is not asking for very much here.

In fact, I’d say it’s the bare minimum professionalism requires.

You don’t own your company-provided equipment. This is explained by Apple, in addition to being a patently obvious fact.

If you personally choose to misuse company equipment, that is something you are personally responsible for.

Adults trying to shift blame back to Apple is a remarkable abdication of a simple responsibility. If they cannot exercise good judgement in such a straight-forward case, I question whether they can be expected to operate professionally in the work-force at all.

I’ve been given a MacBook on the first day at work, there was zero chance I would log in with my own iCloud ID - I created a new one.

Correct. Don’t use work computers for personal stuff and don’t use personal stuff for work.

It’s part of the on-boarding at my company (which happens to have formerly been at the same location Apple’s HQ is now).

Why are apple employees getting subpoenaed? Is this common at Apple?

It's not clear if it was the employee in particular. It was a work device, so it's possible that devices from people on a team or involved in something were needed for some legal thing.

+1 It must have not been the employee in particular. Big companies get sued all the time, and then all written records on work devices, for products that got sued, becomes evidence.

Major companies are getting sued continually. It probably isn’t an individual person, but a product that a team or department worked on that is involved in the lawsuit.

How often is 'continually'? Is there any way to estimate how many times per year is each major company sued?

A company like Apple probably deals with hundreds of major lawsuits per year. Must be thousands of smaller cases too.

Not that I know of. A rough guess is they receive 3 new lawsuits daily.

Having a separate account for work and private stuff should be common sense. No surprise your employer wants to access it when you used it for work related reasons. This can be as trivial as some business contacts having your mail and trying to contact Apple.

People just out from college might not know this yet. And others too who never were in similar situations and never had any problems with their employer or the legal system, and don't visit HN

Yeah, this is simply false.

Apple doesn’t expect you to use a personal iCloud account, and is very clear about warning you about sharing /storing personal data on work systems.

I have very little sympathy for someone that used a personal account containing nudes on a work device.

That was a work-inappropriate choice with entirely predictable results.

In this day and age, having nudes in any device connected to the cloud is irresponsible.

Unless you are fine with your nudes

> This doesn't sound like company policy, and more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.

Yeah it feels like something is definitely missing here. If it's some kind of legal discovery, it's no shocking that the person cannot delete "personal stuff" before they hand it over, that would basically render pointless whatever they are doing with the phone.

The only way there should be a legal hold on a phone like that, is if it is her work phone, which she shouldn't be having nude pics of herself on in the first place.

Personal devices could certainly be a part of discovery.

The company has no legal right to even know you have a personal device. You could just say you don't have one.

Or just quit the company if they ask you to hand over a personal device.

In the US, you may not have freedom not to participate in a legal proceeding if discovery includes items on your personal device. Even if you quit.

It's almost always the other party in the lawsuit who is subpoenaing your past communications. Your employer is being forced by the court to retrieve these; it isn't their choice. It is in fact possible for your personal communications to get subpoenaed for a lawsuit related to your work. But, the other party will need some evidence that you had a conversation on a personal device that relates to the lawsuit. They can't just subpoena something like "all communications by employees relating to terms X and Y."

Usually your employer would prefer that you not hand over your personal device. Because the other party is looking for some sort of "smoking gun" where employees admit that they think some corporate behavior is bad or breaking the law. The penalties for not cooperating here are bad enough, though, that companies will generally cooperate. And the situations where it's a personal device are relatively rare, usually it's just corporate devices.

Quitting the company doesn't change anything. You can still be subpoenaed after you leave the company and the court can force you to turn things over.

Source: I'm not a lawyer but I have had my communications subpoenaed from my time at both Google and Facebook and I have complained to many corporate lawyers about how stupid these rules are while they politely explained to me how the system works

This is stupid. Reformat your personal device every week as a habitual practice. Keep multiple personal devices. Use voice when possible so that wiretap laws protect you.

Company should have no right to your family communications.

I never use text.

I don’t know why you keep saying it is the company that is trying to access your communications. It isn’t. It is the courts ordering you to hand over your communication.

If you delete something that the court has ordered you to turn over, they can and will charge you with contempt.

Again, this isn’t your employer doing this. Your employer would love if you didn’t turn over anything, but they are legally required to cooperate and will get in a lot of trouble if they don’t do their part.

Well no, just reformat your device regularly and habitually just out of your own practice. Don't use text. Use voice calls. Maintain inbox zero on your personal e-mail.

That way if ordered by the legal system you'll only actually have at most 1 week of personal data and none of it will be text.

You won't be deleting anything after their request, you will just hand over what you have, which is incidentally not much.

Wiretapping laws prevent courts from getting your voice records, at least in CA.

It’s not the company who is doing discovery. It is the legal system. You can’t quit out of that.

If personal devices were not subject to legal discovery, every company would just have all the executives only use a personal device for all communication, and suddenly they are immune to discovery?

> The only way there should be a legal hold on a phone like that, is if it is her work phone, which she shouldn't be having nude pics of herself on in the first place.

some people use their personal phone for work email, etc. and miss the fact that that makes the phone basically a company property - i.e. the company can wipe it remotely, etc.

Wrt. Apple requiring to not wipe out laptop before returning it i wonder how do they enforce it. In more than 2 decades i have never returned laptop without wiping it and wonder what can change that, if any.

At least on android (maybe not used at apple?) there are work profiles. You install all the work stuff there, and that partition can be remotely wiped. All of your personal stuff is kept segregated. It's also nice that you can turn off the work profile during weekends and holidays so that you don't get work notifications.

> ... more like they were subpoenaed or otherwise compelled to hand over communications.

Exactly. OP wrote it was a "discovery thing". Discovery is a legal process for gathering evidence in a lawsuit. All relevant business records are discoverable, even if they're stored on employees' personal devices.

> legal forced me to hand-over all my texts

Who is "legal"? Corporate legal? They no right to your personal phone. Even if they were subpoenaed, they could only ask you to hand over data on corporate devices, not your personal one.

The only people who can get your personal device are a search warrant from a court.

Most of these companies offer a BYOD option where you explicitly agree to co-mingle work & personal use of your phone -- upto & including paying your cellular bills. This frequently means signing waivers permitting surveillance, installing corporate applications, surrendering the phone upon termination, and placing everything on the device at risk of subpoena.

When the company is subpoenaed, they aren't going to give you the chance to delete data from "evidence". This is probably what happened here.

Right, makes sense. I'd never BYOD to work unless I had a spare throwaway device specifically for that. But as long as you maintain a separate personal device that you never touch work stuff on -- and hell, never bring it inside the office -- they shouldn't have the right to data on that.