Source Code: Your daily look at what matters in tech.
To give you the best possible experience, this site uses cookies. If you continue browsing. you accept our use of cookies. You can review our privacy policy to find out more about the cookies we use.
yesIssie LapowskyNone
April 21, 2020
The executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center is leaving the organization, the chair of EPIC's board said in a statement Tuesday. The news comes after members of EPIC's staff told the board that their boss, Marc Rotenberg, came to work and held meetings after his doctor directed him to take a COVID-19 test that later came back positive. The allegations were first reported by Protocol last week.
In a statement posted to EPIC's website, board chair Anita Allen wrote that "the time has come for new leadership at EPIC."
"Marc has contributed tremendously as a scholar and advocate to a powerful global movement in support of privacy, freedom of expression and democratic values," Allen wrote. "He has helped shape EPIC's values-driven policy and advocacy related to the internet, artificial intelligence and government surveillance." Rotenberg has recently been an outspoken critic of invasive surveillance efforts to address the spread of COVID-19.
EPIC's general counsel, Alan Butler, was named interim executive director while the organization looks for a permanent replacement. Neither Allen nor Rotenberg immediately responded to requests for comment.
Last week, Protocol reported on the staff's concerns, citing interviews with several current and former employees, as well as internal documents and Rotenberg's own letter to the staff. According to the letter, Rotenberg's doctor instructed him to take a COVID-19 test on March 6, just before Rotenberg was set to take off on a flight to Miami for the weekend. Rotenberg, who said he had not been symptomatic, continued on his trip and took the test when he returned to Washington, D.C., the following Monday.
Rotenberg went to work that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning, leaving the office as soon as he received a call telling him his test came back positive. But he didn't inform his employees of any of this until that Thursday, a day after EPIC's D.C.-based staff got a call from the public health authority informing them they were exposed to someone with the virus. Rotenberg later said in his letter that he had followed protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On March 20, EPIC employees wrote to the board, asking its members to take action.
Allen's statement on Tuesday didn't directly address the staff concerns or whether Rotenberg's departure was based on the board's decision. In an email obtained by Protocol that was sent to EPIC's board of advisers over the weekend, Allen wrote that the board had been working closely with Rotenberg and EPIC employees to address the issue since March 12. Allen also assured the board of advisers that EPIC was "financially sound."
"Rest assured that we are doing our jobs, and that Marc has, over the past six weeks, accountably provided the board with the detailed information we requested," Allen wrote in the email.
Issie Lapowsky
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
People
Expensify CEO David Barrett: ‘Most CEOs are not bad people, they're just cowards’
"Remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it?"
Expensify CEO David Barrett has thoughts on what it means for tech CEOs to claim they act apolitically.
Photo: Expensify
January 19, 2021
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
January 19, 2021
The Trump presidency ends tomorrow. It's a political change in which Expensify founder and CEO David Barrett played a brief, but explosive role.
Barrett became famous last fall — or infamous, depending on whom you ask — for sending an email to the fintech startup's clients, urging them to reject Trump and support President-elect Joe Biden.
<p>"Anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy," Barrett said in the email.</p><p>It was an unprecedented political maneuver by a CEO-founder in Silicon Valley, and one that drew praise from a preeminent historian of the region.</p><p>"This was a moment that utterly transcended politics as usual, and his statement utterly transcended politics as usual," futurist and historian Paul Saffo told Protocol. "I'm sure investors got a little bit of a case of indigestion over this. It was a bold move and I would say it was made with considerable character."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
</div>
</div></p><p>And it wasn't a one-off: Barrett sent another email to Expensify customers over the weekend, telling its users about its plans to spend $3 million on fighting inequality, while also railing against the "domestic terrorists" who invaded the Capitol earlier this month.</p><p>Barrett talked to Protocol last Friday, before the latest email, about the coming transition, which he reflected on in a celebratory mood even as he looked back on the controversial episode. "We just survived Trump. This is going to be an amazing year," he said. "The economy's coming back. The vaccines are rolling out. Travel is going to restart. We got a new administration that's going to make reasonable decisions. We avoided a civil war. Everything's on the up and up."</p><p><em>The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.</em></p><p><strong>You sent that email taking a position on the election. I've talked to a lot of CEOs in Silicon Valley who'd rather stay in the middle. They're not going to say what they think or even who they voted for because it's safer.</strong></p><p>My opinion is a little bit different. I think this idea of "Oh, we're apolitical," I think that's kind of bullshit. I think there's no such thing in a democracy as being apolitical. Every action you take is your position. I think that a large number of these tech companies, by saying, "Oh, we're apolitical," that's a very convenient way of saying, "No, I'm voting for the status quo. I support the current administration, and I'm not going to take actions to do anything about it because it's actually good for business." I think it's actually pretty cynical.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
</div>
</div></p><p><strong>There's going to be a change, and there will be new issues. It's probably not going to be as intense as Trump, but there will be issues. How do you navigate them? It can be a slippery slope when you start to take positions.</strong></p><p>I think the litmus test is: What is the real-world potential impact of this? I don't anticipate to weigh in on the normal issues. It sounded bombastic back then when I wrote the newsletter: "Hey, I am genuinely concerned that we're going to have a true civil war, and that's going to be really bad for business. My business is great. We're profitable. We're growing. We're surviving the pandemic. So long as we don't descend into civil war, we'll be fine. But Trump is saying he's not going to leave office, and is anyone reading this crazy shit? We should take it seriously." </p><p>This is not normal politics. This is not taxes or health care or whatever. This is like the destruction of our nation up for discussion. The only reason I felt it was important as a CEO to weigh in was that the stakes are too high to be neutral here. </p><p>Even right now. The guy's still not out of office, by the way. The FBI's warning that we're going to have attacks on every state Capitol. Never has that happened in the history of the nation before. This is so wild, what we're talking about. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
</div>
</div></p><p>I feel that we need to keep reminding ourselves just how beyond the pale this is. As business leaders, it's just shameful to just sit out this entire thing. It's like, "Oh, remember that one time when we almost had civil war? What did you do about it? Oh, fucking nothing? Oh, good job."</p><p><strong>What was the reaction to the email like? Did any of it give you pause?</strong></p><p>Expensify is not a product you adopt overnight. You also don't leave it overnight. We just didn't know what the reaction was going to be. We saw this thing just go so much bigger than we expected. We were like, "Oh, fuck. OK. That's exciting."</p><p>Most people ignored it, or agreed with it, or vented about it or whatever. The vast majority of people, they're too busy. And in this Twitter news cycle, sustaining anger for more than like 10 seconds is hard. It's like, "Fuck Trump! Oh, such a cute puppy!" It's so hard to do anything.</p><p><strong>Where does that come from, that belief in taking a position? Can you talk a bit about your background?</strong></p><p>My background has always been in hard engineering. Never been in finance. Never been in politics or any of that stuff. I think what you're getting at [is]: Why are you so outspoken? I'm in a lucky position to do that. I run a very profitable business that has a very distributed customer base. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
</div>
</div></p><p>I think most CEOs, it's not that they're bad people, they're just cowards. They're like, "Yeah, I would like to take a stand, but I can't because of investors, customers and things like this." It basically comes down to, "I care more about hitting the next quarter results than preventing a civil war," which is so fucked up. They're more afraid of their investors than they are of militants. I'm in a lucky position where I don't have to be afraid of my investors. I'm super profitable. I can't get fired. There's no majority on the board that can fire me. So I think that I am in a position [where] I can take these stands much more than others. </p><p>I've heard from a lot of other CEOs [about speaking up, and they say]: "I can't. I wish I could. I feel bad. I feel ashamed. But I kind of can't." I feel I can give an example of, like, "Guys, speak up. The water's fine." Defending democracy is not actually a bold choice because most people agree with it.</p><p>Sure, we got a lot of shit on Twitter, or whatever. Those people weren't our customers anyway. It had no negative impact on revenue. If anything, I think we're gonna look back and this is going to be an incredible brand building event. We didn't expect this to go as viral as it did. It's like, "Shocker! Getting massive coverage for defending democracy is good for business, actually."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
</div>
</div></p><p>I think that CEOs need to have the courage to actually step up for things that matter, and be less sort of afraid of the impact on their businesses. Because most customers, especially the people who are actually buying the software, they care about stability, they care about democracy.</p><p><strong>Would you consider politics after your business career?</strong></p><p>No, that sounds like a huge pain in the ass. Plus that assumes that there is an "after my business career." I just made this giant profitable business, and it's fucking awesome. I want to work here forever. My goal is just to stay here forever.</p>
From Your Site Articles
Keep Reading
Show less
Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Signal at (510)731-8429.
People
Amazon’s head of Alexa Trust on how Big Tech should talk about data
Anne Toth, Amazon's director of Alexa Trust, explains what it takes to get people to feel comfortable using your product — and why that is work worth doing.
Anne Toth, Amazon's director of Alexa Trust, has been working on tech privacy for decades.
Photo: Amazon
January 18, 2021
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
January 18, 2021
Anne Toth has had a long career in the tech industry, thinking about privacy and security at companies like Yahoo, Google and Slack, working with the World Economic Forum and advising companies around Silicon Valley.
Last August she took on a new job as the director of Alexa Trust, leading a big team tackling a big question: How do you make people feel good using a product like Alexa, which is designed to be deeply ingrained in their lives? "Alexa in your home is probably the closest sort of consumer experience or manifestation of AI in your life," she said. That comes with data questions, privacy questions, ethical questions and lots more.
<p>During CES week, when Toth was also on a popular panel about the future of privacy, she hopped on a Chime call to talk about her team, her career and what it takes to get users to trust Big Tech. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
</div>
</div></p><p><em>This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.</em></p><p><strong>How does the Trust team work? That's what it's called, right?</strong></p><p>Yeah. I work on the Alexa Trust org, it's part of the Alexa organization overall. The team that I work on is responsible for building all the privacy features, all the privacy controls and settings, and thinking about privacy across Alexa, as well as accessibility. So the aging teams, the accessibility teams, Alexa for Everyone, all reside within this organization. And we're thinking about content issues and the whole gamut. So really all of the all of the policy dimensions and how they manifest in consumer-accessible controls and features is what this team thinks about.</p><p><strong>Why is that one team? You just named a bunch of different, equally important things. What is the tie that binds all of those things?</strong></p><p>Well … I think it's trust, right? It's, how do we develop trustworthy experiences? We are very much a horizontal organization that works throughout the Alexa org. </p><p>And the Alexa org actually is much larger than I even anticipated. When I first was interviewing with the organization, I was really surprised at how big and how quickly it's grown. So it's truly a horizontal effort to think about the customer experience, and all of these areas where there are potential trust issues, and try to deal with them very proactively. </p><p><strong>That's a much bigger definition of trust than I would have guessed. I feel like we talk about trust a lot as sort of synonymous with privacy, and so "what do you do with my data" is the core question. But then when you put things like accessibility and ethics in there, it broadens the definition of what you're looking at in this really interesting way.</strong></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
</div>
</div></p><p>Yeah, it's a very expansive view. I have worked on privacy for most of my career. It often presents as a defensive issue for companies, right? And even the word "privacy" brings up a sort of connotation that makes you think about all the things you don't want people to know. </p><p>But I think of it really as an opportunity to innovate and to try to create more positive experiences, rather than to think of it as a defensive posture. How are we enabling the usage of data to help create better experiences for customers? Because that's really, ultimately what customers want: for you to use data to make this better for me. And I'm totally good with that. The concern is when I'm not sure what I'm getting out of you using my data, and you have it, and why do you have it? That's the area that's problematic. And what I see, and what we're trying to do, is to be very transparent, and to demonstrate time and again how your data is actually benefiting you in this product experience.</p><p><strong>That's actually one of the things I wanted to talk about. You said in another interview that so much of privacy and security is basically just, like, don't screw up. There's no positive experience, it's just there until you ruin it. It's interesting to think about it the other way: to say, "What does it look like to be more proactive about privacy and data security?" What does that look like for you, in terms of how to actually put it in front of people in a way that feels useful, instead of just having pop-ups that say, "Don't worry, we're not using your data for bad things?"</strong><br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
</div>
</div></p><p>Designing for privacy, or designing for trust more specifically, is about baby steps. It's like developing a relationship with a person, right? You have to earn the trust. And you have to do things in the beginning that over time become less important. So the wake word: We rely very heavily on the wake word. You have to invoke Alexa. But the use of the wake word, and the training around that, is in order to make people comfortable with the fact that we are only streaming your requests to the cloud once the wake word has been invoked. </p><p>That is about interjecting some conscious friction, to create a trusted experience so that later when we have more advanced features, more advanced conversational-type elements, you'll be in a place where you're comfortable with that experience. It moved you along that learning curve, and got to that place where you trust us to do that for you effectively. </p><p>I think it was on Twitter or on LinkedIn, I saw that there was an article that had gone viral. There was a security organization that did a breakdown of an Echo device because there was a theory the mic-off button was in fact just cosmetic. So they did a whole breakdown and sort of mapped out the electronics to prove, in fact, if the red light is on, the wiring to the mic is disabled. The red light and the mic cannot both be on at the same time and vice versa. That was a design choice. There are a lot of choices that are about getting people comfortable with the device, and feeling that degree of trust so that later down the road, we can introduce more features that people will be more likely to use. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
</div>
</div></p><p><strong>But it's telling even that those sort of conspiracy theories exist, right? People think the same thing about Facebook turning on their microphone. Does it feel like there is this perception hole that every big tech company is in right now? That you, as Alexa, have to go out of your way to convince people that you're doing the right thing, as opposed to even starting in a neutral place? It just feels like we're in this place where people are learning to be suspicious about things that they don't understand.</strong></p><p>I'm kind of a hardened cynic. That's just my natural disposition on things. So yes, I think we are in a period of time right now where skepticism is at an all-time high. And I think deservedly so, in the world we're living in at the present moment.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
</div>
</div></p><p>But what I'm often heartened by is that people have put this device into their homes, into their most sacred private spaces with their families with their loved ones. To do that is a big leap of faith and trust in Amazon and Alexa. So the mere fact that we're there is already a sign that people have extended to us the benefit of the doubt and have said "we trust you." </p><p>So it's not even so much about having to earn that trust in the first place as it is having to be worthy of that trust, right? Or be worthy of that privilege of being in that space. That's the goal for me: to make sure that we continue to be worthy of the trust they've already placed in us, which is not a hurdle everyone gets over. </p><p><strong>What about as you think about things like default settings versus giving people choice? You can give people all the options in the world, but we know for a fact that most people are never going to change anything. So I'm suspicious of the idea that that's a solution to these problems, but it's definitely part of the solution. How do you think about making good decisions for people versus letting people make decisions?</strong> </p><p>First of all, no two people have the exact same notions of privacy. It's different generations, different cultures, different backgrounds, different experiences, all driving different expectations. No matter where you set a default, it's not going to be right for everybody. So there has to be the ability to change it. And you have to make that easy to find. <br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
</div>
</div></p><p>So in the Alexa context, voice-forward commands to try to make it as easy as possible to be able to say, "why did you do that," or "delete what I just said," or "delete everything I have ever said" — those kinds of interactions help reduce the friction in privacy, they make it easier for people to exercise those those options. </p><p>Your default settings generally represent your organizational bias, in one way or the other. And in this case, the default settings that we have reflect our ability to use data in a way that's going to improve the product and make it better for the customer. So that's where they are. And that's how they've been determined. But they're not immovable. And that's the most important part. </p><p><strong>Well, that education piece seems hard, though. We've seen Facebook, for instance, try to explain why it collects a lot of data. And it doesn't necessarily track for a lot of people. There was this big dustup with WhatsApp, people lost their minds. Is it harder than you're making it sound to help people understand what you're doing with their data?</strong></p><p>In some ways, I think that this product gives you a more immediate example of that data benefit than other products. I mean, I spent a lot of my career talking about the benefits of targeted advertising, and how if you're going to get an ad, better to get a targeted ad than one that's irrelevant. But the relative benefit to you as a customer, as an individual, for that use of your data doesn't really feel as meaningful as the types of experiences or improvements we're able to make. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
</div>
</div></p><p>And there's lots of data, particularly looking at introducing Alexa into new countries and languages and dialects, where the ability to use that voice data to dramatically improve our responses and our accuracy is something that is noticeable by people over time. I think people would recognize that, that trajectory.</p><p><strong>That's fair. And it does seem like most people, when you explain it to them, will understand pieces of it like that.</strong> </p><p>This is why I love "Alexa, why did you do that?" Because Alexa doesn't always get it right the first time, and to be able to actually ask and get a response about what that reasoning was, and you can see it in real time — you can't do that with a lot of other experiences. That's a cool one that I hope more people use. </p><p>But we are faced with some real challenges under regulation about explainable AI. These technologies are getting more and more sophisticated, and when they work really well, sometimes we're delighted, and sometimes we're creeped out. It's that balancing act of like, "Wait a minute, that was really useful … should I be worried?" Which is why trust is so important to develop, so that when you get to that moment, you can offer a customer benefit without it being intrusive, or invasive or feeling somehow uncomfortable. Devices should learn!</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
</div>
</div></p><p><strong>You're a privacy person, so I have a current events question for you: We're in the middle right now of this privacy versus transparency debate, where it's either better to let people use encrypted services because they can't be watched or becomes a problem because bad people can do bad stuff in those encrypted services and nobody can find them. And obviously, this shows up in lots of scary ways recently. Where do you fall on the debate?</strong></p><p>I will have to speak to this on a personal level, but all the messaging apps I use are end-to-end encrypted for primary messaging. I think it's important, and I think that there's a role that they play that is important. There are lots of people who think that people aren't really concerned about privacy in the world, and we've passed that moment where privacy is an issue. Just based on the number of people that I've seen crop up on Signal and Telegram in the last week, I can tell you that people really are paying attention. So I think that if that's the indicator that we should be looking at, then I would say privacy is not dead. People really do care. And it's something everybody should be paying attention to.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="9">
</div>
</div></p>
Keep Reading
Show less
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
Politics
In 2020, COVID-19 derailed the privacy debate
From biometric monitoring to unregulated contact tracing, the crisis opened up new privacy vulnerabilities that regulators did little to address.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, says the COVID-19 pandemic has become a "cash grab" for surveillance tech companies.
Photo: Lianhao Qu/Unsplash
December 30, 2020
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
December 29, 2020
As the coronavirus began its inexorable spread across the United States last spring, Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, worried the virus would bring with it another scourge: mass surveillance.
"A lot of really bad ideas were being advanced here in the U.S. and a lot of really bad ideas were being actually implemented in foreign countries," Schwartz said.
<p>In China, where the virus first took hold, the country had already begun using draconian smartphone-based tools to <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51439401" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">track sick people's whereabouts</a> and effectively force them to stay home. In Israel, lawmakers rushed through a proposal to give government officials <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51930681" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">access to Israelis' location data</a>. As the White House met with tech giants including Facebook and Google to discuss ways they could help, Schwartz and others feared the U.S. might be next in allowing fear of the virus to subvert basic civil liberties.</p><p>Nine months into the crisis, Schwartz said, the "worst ideas" being deployed internationally have yet to take hold in the U.S. But that doesn't mean COVID-19 hasn't created a slew of smaller, but still insidious privacy setbacks for Americans who, in recent years, have become increasingly wary of all the intrusive ways that governments and private companies use their personal data. Since March, corporate offices and college campuses have been flooded with biometric scanners, employers have deployed software that lets them remotely monitor workers' keystrokes and giant corporations like Ticketmaster have <a href="https://help.ticketmaster.com/s/article/What-are-your-COVID-screening-requirements?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">contemplated</a> linking people's negative COVID-19 tests to their tickets to gain entry to future events. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
</div>
</div></p><p>While many of these precautions are well-meaning attempts to preserve public safety and to use technology to get the economy up and running again, they can come at a cost to personal privacy. And yet, the crisis has once again relegated privacy legislation to the back burner in Congress as lawmakers battle over how to handle dueling health and economic disasters.</p><p>Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, says the COVID-19 pandemic has become a "cash grab" for surveillance tech companies. "I think this has been the most dangerous moment for civil rights since 9/11," he said. "When you're faced with impossible choices like whether or not to keep schools open and deprive kids of an education or put them at risk, it's so easy to be taken in by the allure of magical thinking and startups that say if you just install this tracking device you'll somehow be able to avoid doing the impossible."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
</div>
</div></p><p>Contact tracing has been a source of concern, as governments across the country work with a slew of private firms to manage manual contact tracing with no real guardrails in place. "People by the thousands are telling contact tracers where they've been, who they're with, and we don't think there are sufficient ways to secure that data, especially when private contractors or for-profit corporations are helping," Schwartz said.</p><p>In New York, Cahn's organization supported legislation that would have protected New Yorkers from having their contact tracing data used against them in court or administrative proceedings. That bill passed over the summer, but Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet to sign it into law, leaving that information vulnerable. "In most states, police or ICE can get contact tracing data with a subpoena," Cahn said. "This not only creates a privacy threat, but it's a public health nightmare. There are millions of Americans who would second guess whether to fully disclose their potential contacts."</p><p>Apple and Google partnered on a contact-tracing tool that went to extremes to ensure people's data wouldn't be centrally stored or shared with either company or with the government. But health officials, at least early on, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/15/app-apple-google-virus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">scoffed</a> at the limitations. "Digital apps and technology have struggled in the in-between space of wanting to track the path of this disease, this virus, while at the same time really struggling with very real privacy concerns," said Malkia Devich-Cyril, founding director and senior fellow at the advocacy group MediaJustice.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
</div>
</div></p><p>The imminent rollout of a vaccine presents even trickier questions, like what happens if businesses or governments begin requiring people to prove they've been vaccinated in order to access certain spaces. California's legislature already defeated a bill that would have created a blockchain-based system to create what Schwartz calls "immunity passports." EFF argued that requiring people to hand over their smartphones to prove their immunity would open them up to other privacy invasions and would require people to have a smartphone in the first place. "We view this as a horrible, horrible idea," Schwartz said, noting that EFF will be "in the trenches" if any similar proposals arise.</p><p>Over the course of 2020, there have been other, subtler attitudinal shifts too. In the spring, news outlets that, in the past, criticized apps for surreptitiously tracking and selling people's location data, suddenly began tapping that same data to track where people were actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">staying at home</a> or whether anti-shutdown protesters might be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/18/lockdown-protests-spread-coronavirus-cellphone-data" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">spreading the virus</a>. "We think there's a lot of COVID-washing going on," Schwartz said.</p><p>That COVID-washing hasn't been uniform though, Devich-Cyril said, noting that Black and brown communities with a long history of being surveilled remain wary of that kind of intrusion. "The simple fact of a medical disaster is not enough to turn people away from their desire for basic freedoms and rights," Devich-Cyril said.</p><p>Still, despite these setbacks, privacy advocates did score some wins in the midst of the chaos. On Election Day, Portland, Maine succeeded in banning facial recognition technology. Michigan voted to require police to seek search warrants before accessing electronic data. And California passed Proposition 24, a measure that rewrites the California Consumer Privacy Act and gives Californians new rights over protecting their data. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
</div>
</div></p><p>"That is the story of privacy in 2020," said Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, which backed Prop. 24. "That was a significant step forward." It's worth noting that not all privacy groups celebrated the passage of Prop. 24. Some, like the American Civil Liberties Union, opposed it over concerns that it created new privacy loopholes for businesses.</p><p>Schwartz is at least relieved that so many of the "bad ideas" that emerged at the beginning of 2020 have not been adopted in the U.S. But as the pandemic rages on through 2021, the fight for privacy in the face of a global health crisis will undoubtedly continue.</p>
From Your Site Articles
Keep Reading
Show less
Issie Lapowsky (@issielapowsky) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University’s Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing. Email Issie.
People
The year our personal lives took center stage at work
2020's blurring of professional and personal boundaries exacerbated disparities, humanized leaders and put personal values front and center.
In 2020, the personal and the professional became inextricable at work.
Photo: Tom Werner/Getty Images
December 28, 2020
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
December 28, 2020
For those of us lucky enough to keep our jobs and privileged enough to be able to work from home, our whole selves were bared at work this year. Our homes and faces were blown up for virtual inspection. Our children's demands and crises filled our working hours, and our working mothers became schoolteachers and housewives, whether they wanted to or not. Our illnesses became vital public information, and our tragedies shared. Our work lives ate into our social lives until there was no boundary between them.
In 2020, the personal and the professional became inextricable at work. Remote work might be the most sexy 2020 trend, but for the CEOs and leaders I spoke with, the de-professionalization of work could be the most important effect on a personal level. It's the one that has caused the most harm to women in the workplace and destroyed work-life balance for basically everyone. It's also what has contributed to the majority of work-from-home Americans being more satisfied with their work lives than they were before, mostly because they feel more connected to their families, they're able to set their own schedules and they're more comfortable at home, according to a Morning Consult poll. While we can't know exactly how many and who will be going back to the office just yet, as long as there is some kind of flexible work schedule, people's personal lives will be part of their work lives and vice versa.
<p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
</div>
</div></p><p>"In some respects, it has created intimacy in a way we didn't expect. Because you can't hide your life. You can't hide your whole self," explained Erika Fisher, chief administrative officer and general counsel at Atlassian. This can allow people to set their own schedules around their needs and increase empathy between workers and their managers. The increased intimacy also became an equalizer in meetings, because it democratizes participation and gives everyone the same physical space online, according to Fisher. "You don't have to worry about the man-spreading that happens in meetings, literally or metaphorically," she said.</p><p>Personal politics and activism at work are also an element of newly blurred professional boundaries. The summer of protests following the killing of George Floyd, combined with the chaos of the 2020 election cycle, spurred more than just diversity pledges by corporations; it created a new wave of people bringing their politics and values to work. While Brian Armstrong <a href="https://www.protocol.com/coinbase-social-political-policies-backlash" target="_self">stirred up support in some corners when he declared that political and social beliefs had no place at Coinbase</a>, his memo also crystalized for others that personal identity and personal values should be welcomed where they work. Company leaders at SF-based edtech startup Outschool encouraged their employees to get involved in the 2020 election, while people like Kary Campbell, Airbnb's former director of design, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/social-media-ultimate-test?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5" target="_self">told me that</a> "companies and societies can no longer just exist to create profitable numbers for their shareholders. We need to evolve as human beings to be more creative than that." </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
</div>
</div></p><p>While global comms provider Mitel has never taken explicit political positions, the historically quiet company saw a big jump in activism, affinity group creation and values discussions among its workforce this year. "I think we can agree that people need to be treated fairly and that we should embrace and welcome who people are," said Mary McDowell, the company's CEO. "That is part of people's whole selves. It's part of what they bring to work now, when it wasn't before."</p><p>But while falling professional boundaries have been good for some people and some parts of work, they've seriously damaged others. Just because personal lives are now dictating work schedules and kids, pets and houses take center stage on screen doesn't mean that workers' relationships with peers and managers are as healthy or social as they were before. Instead, intimate personal information is shared without the buffer of friendship and companionship that can be found in the office, <a href="https://www.aei.org/articles/remote-work-is-becoming-the-new-normal-it-comes-with-tradeoffs/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">making most workers feel <em>more</em> lonely</a>, isolated and judged, not less. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
</div>
</div></p><p>"Increased intimacy also makes differences much more acute," Fisher said. And it's those differences that contribute <a href="https://www.protocol.com/mckinsey-head-of-diversity-lareina-yee-interview" target="_self">to the fact that one in four women in corporate roles have considered downshifting their careers</a>, according to McKinsey's Women in the Workplace 2020 report. The "always-online" remote work norm has made caretaking responsibilities, which fall more heavily on women, increasingly visible at work; now, "worry that their performance is being negatively judged because of caregiving responsibilities during the pandemic" is one of the key factors affecting why working mothers are considering downshifting their careers, according to the report.</p><p>But falling professional boundaries could also help solve the problem, said Lareina Yee, McKinsey's chief diversity officer and the report's leader. Many companies have policies that encourage flexibility and leave-taking, but workers don't see their leaders take advantage of those policies. If leaders are clear that they are fighting the same battles, they can "de-risk this perception that their career will be hurt if they actually say they need to use something that a company already offers," she said. </p><p>Fisher is focused on physical space in her search for solutions. Some workers are comfortable in their home spaces and willing and even eager to share them on video, but others may not have privacy, or a clean room, or enough space to be conducive to work and to help them feel comfortable at home. Twitter's RoomRater and other Zoom-rating accounts, while mostly funny and well-intentioned, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/epdzkn/room-rater-twitter-account-work-from-home-zoom" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">made that abundantly clear,</a> literally assessing the quality of a person's room and helping legitimize the judgment and subsequent shaming of people's personal spaces. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
</div>
</div></p><p>So, whether people go back to the office full time, Fisher wants to find ways for Atlassian to provide a physical space that allows people to enjoy the flexibility of work-from-home while reducing the disparities and judgment that can come with the increased intimacy. "Space is one of the choices that you can extend to people," she said.</p><p>In 2021, the conversation about work will be a conversation about the choices we make in physical spaces, and about whether we want to rebuild the walls between our personal and professional lives. Fisher described it best: "There's this wave happening. Even when the wave comes ashore and washes back out … There will be a different direction."</p><p>Here at Protocol, we've written more stories about the future of work than I have the energy to count (I got to 20 before I gave up, and that only took me as far back as May). So if you're looking for more on what we learned in 2020, I selected some of the most interesting and important articles we've written this year: </p><p>Issie Lapowsky <a href="https://www.protocol.com/parents-working-from-home-survey" target="_self">wrote about how remote work is hurting mothers</a>, and Mike Murphy <a href="https://www.protocol.com/accenture-cto-paul-daugherty" target="_self">delved into why the future is probably not entirely remote</a>. David Pierce profiled <a href="https://www.protocol.com/dropbox-spaces" target="_self">Dropbox's Drew Houston, who hopes to capitalize on a new world of work</a> and interviewed <a href="https://www.protocol.com/superhuman-ceo-rahul-vohra-interview" target="_self">Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra on how to run a remote company</a> on our podcast. I talked to <a href="https://www.protocol.com/peter-schwartz-salesforce-remote-work" target="_self">Salesforce's futurist Peter Schwartz</a> about why companies will lose talent if they aren't flexible about work and dug into <a href="https://www.protocol.com/atlanta-tech" target="_self">how new ideas about work will make it easier</a> for companies to diversify their workforce by investing in places like Atlanta.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
</div>
</div></p>
Keep Reading
Show less
Anna Kramer is a reporter at Protocol (@ anna_c_kramer), where she helps write and produce Source Code, Protocol's daily newsletter. Prior to joining the team, she covered tech and small business for the San Francisco Chronicle and privacy for Bloomberg Law. She is a recent graduate of Brown University, where she studied International Relations and Arabic and wrote her senior thesis about surveillance tools and technological development in the Middle East.
Protocol | Enterprise
How Christian Klein’s reboot of SAP’s strategy is working out
The pandemic wasn't kind to the company. But the way it's working with the major COVID-19 vaccine makers is a model for what comes next.
Christian Klein became SAP's sole CEO in April.
Photo: Picture Alliance/Getty Images
January 11, 2021
Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
December 22, 2020
Christian Klein took over as SAP's sole CEO in April. It wasn't an ideal time to take the helm of an organization that sells expensive enterprise software.
As the spread of COVID-19 forced corporations everywhere to cut costs, one of the first places they looked was IT budgets. Specifically, companies around the world trimmed spending on back-end products, such as those offered by SAP, many of which still run via on-premise data centers.
<p>But now, with an end to the pandemic in sight, Klein is charting a path toward recovery. Central to his strategy is for SAP to become even more of a key tech vendor for the world's most complex companies, analysts say. That means doubling down on industries that are already robust SAP customers, such as manufacturing and automotive, as well as convincing them to pivot to use SAP products in the cloud.</p><p>"We have always been the leading on-premise application platform," Klein <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/sap-charts-new-course-to-accelerate-cloud-shift-co-innovation-one-data-model/" target="_blank">told Wall Street analysts</a> earlier this year. "Our intention is to repeat that for the cloud."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
</div>
</div></p><p>Those sorts of sectors would be ideal clients for SAP because they run very data-heavy operations. SAP's enterprise resource planning software helps track those processes and, perhaps more importantly, allows the stored information to be more easily accessible across the enterprise. </p><p>And by transitioning to the cloud-based products, SAP has the opportunity to deepen its relationships with existing customers. For one, clients switch from paying large upfront costs to monthly installments. That's an increasingly attractive model for organizations because it becomes easier to scale up or down based on demand. As that adoption grows, it could also increase the likelihood that corporations will pile on additional cloud-based SAP applications, ultimately helping the provider achieve its vision of underpinning all operations across the enterprise. </p><p>"[With] asset-intensive organizations, it's important to be able to manage the end-to-end processes. And that is something that SAP has focused on," said Paul Saunders, a senior research director at Gartner.</p><p>That strategy is apparent in the company's work with the life sciences industry. Moderna, which hopes to start <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-vaccine-slaoui-likely-approved-by-end-of-week-2020-12" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">distributing its COVID-19 vaccine this year</a>, uses SAP's ERP software known as S/4HANA. That's enabled Moderna to "improve the quality of drugs being produced," according to a <a href="https://www.sap.com/documents/2017/11/8c9e515b-e27c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">synopsis of the partnership</a> from SAP. And Moderna is deploying other solutions on top of the core ERP, like a program that will help the company <a href="https://news.sap.com/2020/12/sap-moderna-covid-19-vaccine-distribution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">prevent counterfeit vaccines</a>. Similar tools are in use at AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline and <a href="https://blog.asug.com/hubfs/ASUG83120%20-%20Pfizer's%20Flight%20to%20SAP%20Cloud%20Platform.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pfizer</a> — pharmaceutical companies working on COVID-19 vaccines — according to publicly available information.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
</div>
</div></p><p>"When you look at what is just happening out there on the vaccine side, there we are almost supporting every manufacturing, every logistic provider," Klein <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/article/4392353-sap-ses-sap-ceo-christian-klein-presents-fourth-annual-wells-fargo-tmt-summit-2020-conference" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">said at a recent Wells Fargo conference</a>.</p><p>That all serves to demonstrate how, despite its most recent struggles, SAP remains a powerhouse in the enterprise software industry. </p><p>But it's not to say Klein's onto a sure thing: For many of these companies and others, SAP is just one of a slew of vendors currently in use. Enterprises are also reimagining how they use their ERP systems, according to <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Deloitte</a>, and shifting more non-critical business functions to other third-party applications to reduce legacy IT debt — a phenomenon that could ding SAP in the long run. Some companies, for example, may seek to take software that helps manage the human resource function off of the ERP and run it separately. </p><p>And despite being a market leader in ERP software, SAP isn't without competition. Oracle remains a key rival, and its founder Larry Ellison has alluded to a more fierce competition ahead in the cloud. He even told analysts during a recent earnings call that Oracle would soon announce a slate of large-scale customers it stole from SAP. </p><p>"Oracle is the clear market leader in cloud ERP," Ellison declared on a call with Wall Street analysts earlier this month. That "will become even more obvious when we announce that several major large-scale SAP ERP customers are leaving," he added. Still, that's a promise Ellison also made last year, and one which has yet to materialize — at least publicly. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
</div>
</div></p><p>Despite the challenges, SAP's overall sales grew slightly to nearly $20 billion In the first nine months of 2020. But while for Klein the recovery is a long-term vision, his plan hasn't exactly been embraced by investors. Following a statement in late October that <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/sap-stock-price-2020-outlook-downgrade-2020-10-1029720099" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">outlined a two-year delay in reaching prior revenue targets</a>, SAP's stock dropped 22% — a fall it has yet to recover from.</p><h2>Underpinning vaccine development</h2><p>Even so, a deeper look at how SAP is deployed across top vaccine-makers shows why it's hard to count the software giant and its CEO's vision out entirely.</p><p>Companies typically want to remain quiet when it pertains to an ongoing initiative as critical as eradicating a virus that led to a global pandemic. True to form, spokespersons for Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Pfizer, GSK and Sanofi did not respond to a request for comment about how they use SAP products for this article. But many of the objectives previously outlined by executives at those firms in adopting the company's technology align with the goal of now quickly developing and producing a vaccine.</p><p>GSK, for example, has <a href="https://www.ariba.com/resources/library/library-pages/gsk-and-sap-ariba-how-innovation-improves-lives#video" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">over 90% of its pharmaceutical and vaccine businesses</a> running on SAP's ERP system. The global deployment enables the UK-based manufacturer to better "leverage the significant amounts of data" it collects and develop insights from that information to improve operations, former technology product manager Jonny Dent said during a February webinar.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
</div>
</div></p><p>On top of that software, GSK also uses Ariba, SAP's procurement manager, to improve how the company works with its many suppliers and contract manufacturers — the same ones that could be tasked with helping to mass-produce a vaccine.</p><p>"We're a SAP house through-and-through," Dent told participants at the time.</p><p>At Sanofi, the French drugmaker opted to implement S/4HANA in 2017. The software initially went live in several pilot countries in 2018 in Europe before the company deployed it more broadly earlier this year. One of the goals of the pivot was to consolidate the 10 disparate ERP platforms that Sanofi had as a result of over 300 acquisitions since its founding in 1999, according to a <a href="https://www.sap.com/assetdetail/2020/07/12b04aa9-a37d-0010-87a3-c30de2ffd8ff.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">promotional video posted by SAP</a>. Now, the company says information can be more easily accessed by individuals across different business units.</p><p>AstraZeneca uses SAP's Work Manager software to better oversee its manufacturing equipment. The tool effectively allows factory workers to more closely track their performance on the floor to help managers determine when machines may be close to breaking down. One exec previously said it led to a "6[%] to 8% increase in efficiency." Such an application could play a role in ensuring the production of a vaccine doesn't run into any major hiccups.</p><p>And J&J employs Ariba <a href="https://news.sap.com/2018/02/sap-ariba-and-johnson-johnsons-future-includes-new-technology-better-health-for-everyone/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">to help it partner with more diverse suppliers</a>. Overall, roughly 80% of J&J's spend runs through Ariba, totaling more than 250,000 purchase orders as of February 2018.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
</div>
</div></p><p>So as SAP aims to become an end-to-end partner for key industries, its work with Moderna, GSK and other pharmaceutical companies will serve as a model for how it should try to insert itself in other sectors. Now Klein just needs to make sure that happens. </p>
Keep Reading
Show less
Joe Williams is a senior reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software, including industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. He previously covered emerging technology for Business Insider. Joe can be reached at JWilliams@Protocol.com. To share information confidentially, he can also be contacted on a non-work device via Signal (+1-309-265-6120) or JPW53189@protonmail.com.
Latest Stories
See more
Most Popular
Bulletins
January 15, 2021 13:45 EST
Get Source Code in your inbox
David Pierce's daily analysis of the tech news that matters.