Big tech is constantly being accused of watching us, but a new allegation from a former Apple executive contends his ex-employer was actually reading his text messages.
But the issue didn’t start there. It began when Gerard Williams, chief architect of Apple’s iPhone and iPad chips, left the firm in February of 2019 to go out on his own.
After launching Nuvia, a server chip startup stocked with other former Apple talent, Williams was quickly hit with a lawsuit alleging he violated a non-compete agreement by planning his new gig and recruiting other employees from Apple to join him.
And how do they know that? Because there are supposedly texts to prove it, information which Apple presented in its court filing, according to Bloomberg.
Williams is calling the monitoring a “stunning and disquieting invasion of privacy” and it certainly runs contrary to Apple’s early 2019 ad campaign suggesting that “what happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
While Nuvia’s business model doesn’t place it in head to head competition with Apple, the tech giant says it has considered this business and has lots of R&D tied up in server related technology. Not to mention, they say, Williams “used his knowledge during his tenure of almost a decade at the iPhone maker to develop technologies that would later be used at Nuvia.”
And the company appears to be out for blood. It’s not only seeking injunctions, but they also reportedly want punitive damages from Williams for breach of contract and breach of duty of loyalty. And loyalty is important to Apple … though privacy, it seems, isn’t.
