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The West is faced with a “moment of reckoning” when it comes to technology and security, the head of intelligence agency GCHQ has told the BBC.

Jeremy Fleming said there was a risk that key technologies on which we rely will no longer be shaped by the West.

“We have to keep evolving our approach if we’re going to keep up,” he said of the growing challenge from China.

So-called smart cities, which will collect large amounts of data, are just one example, he added.

“The risk is that the technology is implemented in a way in which we can’t assure its security,” he warned.

The UK is a “big beast” when it comes to technology but “we can’t take that for granted”, the GCHQ director warned, saying this was a moment when we had to decide if we were going to continue to evolve and compete with our adversaries.

Mr Fleming was speaking ahead of giving this year’s Vincent Briscoe Annual Security Lecture at Imperial College, and in the wake of the Integrated Review, which placed science and technology at the centre of future security and defence policy.

Lessons from 5G
The challenge from China is uppermost in the minds of intelligence chiefs across Western countries, particularly when it comes to technology.

“The risk, as I see it today, is that we lose control of the standards that shape our technology environment,” he told the BBC.

“The things that make sure that our liberal Western democratic views are baked into our technology.”

Mr Fleming said there were lessons to be learnt from the debate over the role of Chinese company Huawei in building a new 5G telecoms system. It was initially given a role in the UK, before being excluded following US sanctions.

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But there were concerns that there were few other companies actually able to supply the latest technology.

“The conversation about 5G was really lost a decade ago, when Western nations decided that they weren’t going to invest in the underpinning infrastructures… and the result was we just didn’t have the choices,” he said.

The imperative was to make sure in the future the UK took the kind of long-range decisions need to ensure it has choice – so there would not be the same concerns over dependency, he said.

Smart city fears
That need to look forward prompted a focus on smart cities.

These involve a vast number of sensors and cameras built into a city’s infrastructure – controlling everything from traffic to utilities such as water and power.

But it also means vast amounts of data will be collected about people’s movement and activity.

Done in the right way, the GCHQ chief argues this presents a “fantastic opportunity” to increase efficiency and improve services.

But he warned it also carries risks around privacy and anonymity.

“If we don’t control the technology, if we don’t understand the security required to implement those effectively, then we’ll end up with an environment or technology ecosystem where the data is not only used to navigate, but it could be used to track us”.

China is a leading supplier of smart city technology, with councils in the UK already purchasing cameras from its companies.

Mr Fleming said it was vital to ensure all the technologies were not from one place and to understand how data was being processed.

There were only a relatively small number of areas where the UK would need to completely control a technology, he said, and more broadly working with allies would be essential to shape international standards and to defend itself in cyberspace.

At home, the UK has to invest in skills and innovation.

The UK should not be “fatalistic”, he said, and had a “very strong track record” of meeting technology challenges.

Senators have grilled Apple and Google in Washington over “anti-competitive” behaviour related to their app stores.

Representatives from Tile, Spotify and Match also gave evidence, accusing the two tech firms of charging exorbitant fees and copying their ideas.

Both Apple and Google’s app stores charge fees of up to 30% for in-app purchases.

The two companies said the fees were justified to provide security for users.

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel focussed on claims that Apple’s App Store and Google’s Google Play are anti-competitive.

Senator Amy Klobuchar said that Apple’s App Store was a “literal monopoly”.

She said both stores “exclude or suppress apps that compete with their own products” and “charge excessive fees that affect competition in the app store economy”.

Google Play and the App Store are where the vast majority of apps worldwide are downloaded.

Developers claim that because of a lack of competition Apple and Google can charge extortionate rates.

There were also claims that Apple used its App Store to unfairly compete with rivals.

The hearing came a day after Apple launched its new product: AirTags. These can be attached to items like car keys to help users find them.

The product looks very similar to something already on the market – Tile.

Tile’s General Counsel Kirsten Daru said “We welcome competition but it has to be fair competition and Apple’s idea of competing is patently unfair.”

She also accused Apple of preventing Tile from using the technology behind Apple’s Find My function, giving AirTags an unfair advantage.

Apple said the product was different. “We didn’t copy Tile’s product… It’s extremely different to anything else on the market,” said Apple’s Chief Compliance Officer, Kyle Andeer.

Spotify also accused Apple of using its App Store to charge unfair rates – something Spotify’s Head of Global Affairs, Horacio Gutierrez, described as an “Apple Tax”.

Undercutting us
He also said that Apple directly competed with Spotify with Apple Music, and the in-app charges had made Spotify less competitive.

“They are undercutting us on price,” he said.

He also criticised Apple for having rules that meant they were unable to tell customers that the service was cheaper if it was bought away from the App Store.

Apple said that Spotify had “been incredibly aggressive when it comes to dealing with artists and creators, and driving a hard bargain”.

Mr Andeer said that “less than 1% of Spotify users pay a commission to Apple”.

Match, which owns Tinder, also criticised Apple and Google for the charges it had to pay.

Iron-fisted monopoly
“It is iron-fisted monopoly control,” said Match General Counsel Jared Sine.

“When an industry player has the power to dictate how apps operate, how much they will be forced to pay, and in many cases, if they will even survive, it is a monopoly.”

Both Apple and Google rejected the idea that their app stores were monopolies – and said the charges were fair.

On 3 May, Apple and Epic Games, maker of the popular game Fortnite, will begin a court case in their dispute over the App Store charges.

Some “unacceptable” uses of artificial intelligence would be banned in Europe under proposals unveiled on Wednesday.

The European Commission’s rules would ban “AI systems considered a clear threat to the safety, livelihoods and rights of people”, it said.

It is also proposing far stricter rules on the use of biometrics – such as facial recognition being used by law enforcement, which would be limited.

Breaking the rules could lead to fines of up to 6% of global turnover.

For the largest technology companies, that could amount to billions.

‘Fundamental rights’
The commission’s digital chief, Margrethe Vestager, said: “On artificial intelligence, trust is a must, not a nice-to-have.”

And the EU was developing “new global norms” for AI.

“Future-proof and innovation-friendly, our rules will intervene where strictly needed – when the safety and fundamental rights of EU citizens are at stake,” she said.

The draft rules face a lengthy approval process and are not yet final.

‘High risk’
Many of the core ideas were leaked last week, in advance of the announcement, prompting concern from the technology community that it could stifle innovation.

“The European Commission’s proposed regime will not sit well with many in the community,” said Nikolas Kairinos, chief executive of Soffos.ai, which makes an AI for employee training in businesses.

“Loose definitions like ‘high risk’ are unhelpfully vague.

“An ambiguous, tick-box approach to regulation that is overseen by individuals who may not have an in-depth understanding of AI technology will hardly inspire confidence.”

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Herbert Swaniker, a technology expert at the law firm Clifford Chance, said the proposed hefty fines gave AI regulation much more power – and was “extremely ambitious” in scope.

“There’s a lot to do to sharpen some of these concepts,” he said.

“The fines are one thing – but how will vendors address the significant costs and human input needed to make compliance a reality?

“The proposals will force vendors to fundamentally rethink how AI is procured and designed.”

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The rules would govern what AI was used for, rather than the technology itself, Ms Vestager said.

But “AI systems or applications that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent users’ free will”, including “subliminal techniques”, would fall into the banned “unacceptable risk” category.

Those operating in high-risk areas – such as national infrastructure, education, employment, finance, and law enforcement – would face a series of hurdles before they could be used.

For example, CV-sorting software in recruitment or credit-scoring systems for bank loans would have to;

prove their accuracy and fairness
keep records of all their activity
have “appropriate human oversight”
And all “remote biometric identification” systems – such as the use of facial recognition by police but not using a fingerprint to unlock a phone or a face scan at passport control – would be “subject to strict requirements”.

“Their live use in publicly accessible spaces for law-enforcement purposes is prohibited in principle,” the commission said, with rare exceptions such as an “imminent terrorist threat”.

But the vast majority of AI technology would fall into the low-risk category, with far less strict rules.

Rule-based systems
Chatbots in customer service, for example, should simply make clear people are interacting with a machine.

And simple rule-based systems such as email spam filtering would have no restrictions.

The European Parliament and EU member states will both consider the proposals – and they are likely likely to change as part of that process.

But if passed, the regulations would apply “inside and outside the EU” if an AI system was available in the EU “or its use affects people located in the EU”.

An internal Facebook email, accidentally sent to Belgium-based Data News, has revealed its strategy for dealing with the leaking of account details from 533 million users.

It suggests the social network expected more such incidents and was planning to frame it as an industry problem that was a normal occurrence.

It also said the media attention would die down.

As a result it planned to issue limited statements about the issue.

Facebook confirmed the memo was genuine and told the BBC: “We understand people’s concerns, which is why we continue to strengthen our systems to make scraping from Facebook without our permission more difficult and go after the people behind it.”

Later, a spokesperson added that LinkedIn and Clubhouse had also faced “data scraping” issues.

Data from 533 million people in 106 countries was published on a hacking forum earlier this month.

Facebook said the data was old, from a previously reported leak in 2019. It has denied any wrongdoing, saying that the data was scraped from publicly available information on the site.

But it now faces a probe from the Irish data commissioner about whether it broke GDPR rules, and a mass legal action from affected EU citizens, who had a range of personal data leaked, including phone numbers.

The email published by Data News is dated 8 April – several days after the story broke. It said press coverage on the issue from “top tier global publications” had already declined by 30%.

Reputation over users
It provided a summary of how the story had been reported to date.

“Publications have offered more critical takes of Facebook’s response framing it as evasive, a deflection of blame and absent of an apology for the users impacted,” it noted, adding that the pieces were often driven by quotes from “data experts or regulators, keen on criticising the company’s response as insufficient”.

In a section headed “Long-term strategy”, Facebook said it did not plan additional statements on the issue. “We expect more scraping incidents and think it’s important to both frame this as a broad industry issue and normalise the fact that this activity happens regularly,” it said.

It added that its plan would include a blogpost talking about its anti-scraping work, that offered transparency on how the firm was dealing with the problem.

Data News also questioned Facebook’s assertion that the problem was discovered and resolved in August 2019, pointing out that ethical hacker Inti De Ceukelaire warned the company two years earlier that it was possible to find someone’s phone number via Facebook.

Mr De Ceukelaire told the BBC that the leaked memo “revealed what we have suspected for a long time but now it is there in black and white – Facebook cares more about its reputation than informing its users”.

He said that Facebook had attempted to “spin the problem”.

“At first they were completely silent, then they gave the press one sentence about how the data was old and when that didn’t work they started talking about how it was all about scraping rather than Facebook’s own system.”

He added that the data was not old, because phone numbers usually do not change, and also that the original privacy settings for phone numbers were extremely confusing.

The Bank of England and the Treasury have announced they are setting up a taskforce to explore the possibility of a central bank digital currency.

The aim is to look at the risks and opportunities involved in creating a new kind of digital money.

Issued by the Bank for use by households and businesses, it would exist alongside cash and bank deposits, rather than replacing them.

No decision has been taken on whether to have such a currency in the UK.

However, the government and the Bank want to “engage widely with stakeholders” on the benefits and practicalities of doing so.

The taskforce will be jointly led by the Bank’s deputy governor for financial stability, Sir Jon Cunliffe, and the Treasury’s director general of financial services, Katharine Braddick.

The Bank has previously said it is interested in a central bank digital currency (CBDC) because “this is a period of significant change in money and payments”.

The use of cash in financial transactions has been steadily declining in recent years, while debit card payments have been on the rise. Use of credit cards and direct debits have also been increasing.

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The Bank also sees having its own digital currency as a way of “avoiding the risks of new forms of private money creation”, including crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin.

“If a CBDC were to be introduced, it would be denominated in pounds sterling, just like banknotes, so £10 of CBDC would always be worth the same as a £10 note,” the Bank said.

“CBDC is sometimes thought of as equivalent to a digital banknote, although in some respects it may have as much in common with a bank deposit.

“Any CBDC would be introduced alongside – rather than replacing – cash and bank deposits.”

Enter Britcoin. The Bank of England has been pontificating about digital currencies for some time. Now it and the Treasury will seriously look into establishing an alternative digital currency to be used by households and businesses. The flotation of Coinbase and the stellar performance this year of various crypto-assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is the backdrop.

It would basically be a digital version of sterling, backed by the Bank of England, that could change the payments system, the plumbing of the financial system. It would not be a Bitcoin-style speculative asset with wild fluctuations in value. But there will be limited appeal for the fans of crypto, who invest precisely because of their scepticism about central banks.

Instead, the revolutionary thing here could be the direct relationship that ordinary citizens might have with the central bank, which cannot go bust. It could yield simple, direct means of stimulating the economy and even applying negative rates. Central banks would in theory know when and where every e-cash transaction occurred. China is already ahead in its digital yuan experiments. Part of the rationale is to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of financial innovation.

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Most of the world’s central banks are looking into the possibility of creating such a currency, but the only one already in existence is China’s digital yuan, which is currently undergoing public testing.

Among the objectives of the UK taskforce is monitoring international developments, “to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of global innovation”.

The Bank also announced the creation of a CDBC engagement forum and a technology forum, as well as a CBDC unit within the Bank itself, overseen by Sir Jon.

No timetable was announced for the taskforce’s operations.

Carla Johnson turned 45 on Tuesday, a milestone she thought she might not reach.

On 12 July, she walked up to a manager at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, and said she felt unwell.

Shortly afterwards, she had a seizure on the floor. She was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with brain cancer.

She’s exactly the type of person you might expect to have supported a recent vote to create the first trade union of Amazon workers, in order to safeguard her job post-surgery.

But despite having been in a union in her previous career, she was one of a majority of employees – two-to-one, in fact – to vote the proposal down.

“Amazon has been a godsend for me,” she says.

Carla was a teacher for 14 years in Birmingham, Alabama. She taught 12 and 13-year-old children science.

In 2019 she decided to work for a contractor – preparing students for exams. Then the pandemic hit. With pupils no longer in school, the work dried up.

She looked around for other jobs and found a company that was actually hiring – Amazon. Her first shift was in May.

“I first started out packing. Depending on the item, I would pack it in the box, give it an address and put it on a conveyor belt to be shipped out to the customers. It wasn’t anything that was hard.”

Then one Sunday in July her world fell apart. After her seizure, she remembers telling the paramedics to ring her mum, but little else.

She had surgery to remove a brain tumour, and chemotherapy. Her treatment has cost around $170,000 (£123,000) so far. She says she would never have been able to pay without insurance.

To understand labour relations in the US is impossible without looking at healthcare.

A job isn’t just a pay cheque, it’s a ticket to a longer, healthier life – for workers and their families.

Crucial then to Amazon’s strategy to win a union vote was its healthcare plan for workers. “Starting pay of at least $15 per hour and comprehensive healthcare from day one” was the oft-said message.

Amazon’s tactics had a darker side though. The union wanted to talk about excessive workload, bathroom breaks and pay. Amazon pushed the narrative that the union might take away worker benefits, including healthcare.

Workers were bombarded with messages, including texts, which claimed workers’ benefits might be bargained away by the union.

“You may end up with more, the same, or less” is the message from a union info-website set up by Amazon.

In practice, it would be highly unusual for a union to negotiate away existing perks – and of course it would be Amazon taking away the benefits.

“The only way that happens is if the employer decides to take them away. The union’s not going to argue: ‘Let’s cut benefits for the workers'” says Stuart Appelbaum, head of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union that is pushing for Amazon workers to unionise.

Mr Appelbaum is angry. He believes Amazon played dirty – that the messaging given to Amazon workers at “union education meetings” for example, known by the union as “captive audience meetings”, was misinformation dressed up as fact.

The Amazon centre itself was cloaked in anti-union messaging – in the bathrooms, the break rooms and the entrance, for example.

Darryl Richardson voted for the union. But while trying to persuade others, he realised Amazon’s messaging was working: “They were scared that healthcare was going to be taken away. That’s why a lot of them voted “no” against the union. We got the outcome we have now because they threatened them, that benefits and wages were going to drop.”

Darryl himself had been laid off from his job in a car plant during the pandemic. He’s thankful for the job he has and doesn’t want to leave. But he believes Amazon’s characterisation of the union was inaccurate – particularly when it came to wages and healthcare.

Another area of controversy were union subs, or dues. Critics say that much of Amazon’s narrative was based around the idea that workers would have to pay the union money. However, Alabama is a Right To Work state. No worker has to pay subs. So did Amazon break the law in their messaging?

“It’s not clear” says Prof John Logan, a labour expert at San Francisco State University.

“They are very skilled in operating in the grey areas, that’s why they’re so effective. You know some of what they say is clearly legal. Other things are kind of pushing the boundaries of the law – and the weakness of the law.”

Amazon says: “It was important that all employees understood the facts of joining a union… If the union vote passed, it would impact everyone at the site and it’s important all associates understood what that meant for them”.

But whether the messaging was on the right side of the law or not, one thing was overlooked by many observers who thought the union could win.

The pandemic has caused unemployment which has disproportionately affected black communities.

Around 85% of the workers at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer are black.

And that means this was a workforce acutely sensitive to arguments around pay, benefits and the future of their jobs.

The union argues that Amazon’s tactics amount to “intimidation” of workers and are mounting a legal challenge. Amazon denies the allegations.

“Our employees heard far more anti-Amazon messages from the union, policymakers, and media outlets than they heard from us”, said a spokesperson.

Carla started working again at Amazon in November. “I felt the things the union were offering, I was already getting,” she says.

She spent her birthday having a spa day, and then watched her youngest son play baseball. She is now in remission, and firmly believes she wouldn’t be alive if she hadn’t been working for an employer with good healthcare. She may well be right.

And as for unions? Well, union membership has been falling since the 1980s. Only 6% of Americans working in the private sector are members of a union.

And unless unions can find a way of convincing people like Carla that they can make a positive impact on healthcare, benefits and wages, that’s not going to change.

Google Earth has launched a time-lapse feature that lets users wind back the clock and see how the world has changed over several decades.

The feature uses millions of satellite images from the past 37 years to let people scroll through time.

It allows people to see, for example, the retreat of glaciers alongside global warming, or the deforestation of the Amazon over time.

The company says it is the biggest update to Google Earth in four years.

Google Earth uses similar technology to the widely used Maps product, but is more focused on geology and exploration than public transport and directions.

Users can access the tool in a web browser, and the feature comes with some pre-packaged virtual tours of an Alaskan glacier melting over the years or forest protection efforts in Brazil.

But the time-lapse feature is global – meaning users can just type in any location and experiment with whatever images are available.

Google is heavily marketing the tool as a way to raise awareness of climate change and other environmental issues.

It pointed to the shifting sands of Cape Cod and the drying of Kazakhstan’s Aral Sea as striking examples of how the landscape is changing.

But it also documents the boom in towns and cities across the world – from the rapid expansion of Las Vegas to the building of artificial islands in Dubai.

“We have a clearer picture of our changing planet right at our fingertips – one that shows not just problems but also solutions, as well as mesmerisingly beautiful natural phenomena that unfold over decades,” Google said.

An Earth-sized video
Under the hood, the new version of Google Earth is powered by 24 million different satellite photos, from Nasa, the US Geological Survey’s Landsat project, and the EU’s Copernicus project.

Google said the new features “simply wouldn’t have been possible” without the “commitments to open and accessible data” from those space agencies.

While the average user will only see a tiny fraction of the system at a time, Google says the animated time-lapse imagery is essentially one giant video mosaic, made up of individual video tiles.

The 24 million images date back as far as 1984, and take up 20 petabytes – 20 million gigabytes – of storage space, and “quadrillions of pixels”, the company said.

Together, they make one single video 4.4 terapixels in size – something Google said is the equivalent of more than half a million 4K ultra-high-resolution videos.

Processing all that data took more than two million hours of computer time – shared among thousands of high-powered machines owned by Google to get the job done in a reasonable timeframe.

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“As far as we know, time-lapse in Google Earth is the largest video on the planet, of our planet,” the company said.

That kind of heavy processing in air-conditioned data centres uses vast amounts of power, and has a significant environmental impact. Google argues that all its data centres are carbon neutral, though it does this through the practice of offsetting – paying for environmental projects to “balance” its use of energy.

The huge amount of historical data also has other practical benefits – such as removing clouds. Any one set of photos from the Earth’s surface will have areas obscured by cloud cover that the satellite can’t see.But over time, different pockets become visible, which can then all be stitched together to form a picture of what’s underneath.

Google says it plans to update this new time-lapse project every year for at least the next decade.

“We hope that this perspective of the planet will ground debates, encourage discovery and shift perspectives about some of our most pressing global issues,” it said.

Imagine wearing high-tech body armour that makes you super strong and tireless.

Such technology, more specifically called an exoskeleton, sounds like the preserve of the Iron Man series of superhero movies.

Yet the equipment is increasingly being worn in real life around the world. And one manufacturer – California’s SuitX – expects it to go mainstream.

“There is no doubt in my mind that these devices will eventually be sold at hardware stores,” says SuitX’s founder Homayoon Kazerooni. “As the prices come down you’ll be able to simply buy them at Home Depot.”

In simple terms, an exoskeleton is an external device that supports, covers and protects its user, giving greater levels of strength and endurance.

Sometimes also referred to as “wearable robots”, they can be battery-powered and computer-operated, incorporating motors and hydraulics. Or they can be more simple, passive designs that use springs and dampeners.

“Integrating humans and machines into one system opens up a new realm of opportunity,” says Adrian Spragg, an expert on the technology at management consultancy Accenture. “Many of the early applications have been focused on military and medical applications, but in the last several years there’s been an explosion of use in a range of cases.”

This expansion, which has come together with rapid advances in the technology, has seen exoskeletons increasingly used by manufacturing workers. Versions for consumers are also now being developed to help people more easily do everything from DIY, to walking, climbing stairs, and other daily activities.

One report says sales are now due to rocket as a result. Global exoskeleton revenues are expected to rise from $392m (£284m) in 2020 to $6.8bn in 2030, according to a study by ABI Research.

SuitX’s “suits” are now being tested by car manufacturers General Motors and Fiat. Prof Kazerooni, who is also the director of the University of California’s Berkeley Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory, says that the primary benefit of the firm’s exoskeletons is to prevent muscle fatigue.

“We’ve shown that muscle activity in the back, shoulder and knees drops by 50%,” he says. “If muscle activities drop, that means the risk of muscle injury is less.

“This means that factory or plant managers get more productivity, their insurance costs are lower, and there are less workdays lost to injury. There’s less cost and more productivity.”

General Motors is also looking at a battery-powered exoskeleton glove developed by Swedish firm Bioservo.

This glove, called the Iron Hand, has sensors and motors in each finger, which automatically respond to the level of force that the wearer applies to his or her hand when lifting or gripping something. The glove therefore takes up some of the strain.

BioServo says it can increase the wearer’s hand strength by 20% for extended periods.

Jason Cottrell, the chief executive of MyPlanet, a Canadian software firm that has conducted surveys on the use of exoskeletons, says the world is only just beginning to understand the potential for exoskeleton technology.

A “simple flaw” caused by a language difference led to a “serious incident” for a flight from Birmingham last year.

All female passengers whose title was “Miss” were classified as children – not adults – on the Tui flight after a software upgrade, a report said.

That meant that their average weight used for take-off calculations was lower than it should have been.

The difference could have had an impact on take-off thrust, but the report said flight operation was not compromised.

Take-off prep documents told the pilot that his Boeing 737 jet was 1,244kg lighter than it actually was after using 35kg as the average weight of the females involved rather than 69kg.

That “load sheet” is used to determine how much weight is safe, how the plane is balanced, and other important information for a safe flight within safety regulations.

The AAIB report on the incident said the reservation system that produces the load sheet had been upgraded in the downtime caused by the coronavirus lockdown last year, when the airline suspended flights “for several months”.

Safety officials said the problem was that the software had been programmed in a foreign country where “Miss” is used to refer to children, and “Ms” to adult women.

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That simple language difference led to 38 adult women being considered “children” by the computer system – a difference which, when added to the rest of the passengers and cargo, led to the plane’s calculated and actual weights differing by more than a tonne.

The flight was an early-morning departure from Birmingham International to Majorca, on 21 July 2020.

The Air Accidents Aviation Branch (AAIB) said that in this case, the difference in the calculation of take-off thrust was out by only 0.1% – so “the safe operation of the aircraft was not compromised”.

Investigators said two other flights the same day also suffered from the same problem, but extra manual checks were immediately brought in to prevent the problem happening again.

And another upgrade of the computer system solved the problem.

In a statement, Tui said: “The health and safety of our customers and crew is always our primary concern. Following this isolated incident, we corrected a fault identified in our IT system.

“As stated in the report, the safe operation of the flight was not compromised.”

Everyone has their breaking point. And when it comes it can be a small thing, an incident that usually wouldn’t matter.

Shannon Wait’s moment was when her Google-issued water bottle broke. The data centre she worked in was hot, so she asked for another one. However, she says the Google subcontractor refused to give her one.

That moment sparked a chain reaction that led to an announcement last week. Google signed a statement saying the company’s workers had the right to discuss pay and conditions with each other.

It might seem bizarre that even needed to be said.

But in actual fact it was the culmination of Shannon’s battle with the company.

Her story is one of management overreach, a story that shines a light on managerial practices that have become synonymous with Big Tech.

Shannon finished her history degree in 2018 and started working at a Google data centre in South Carolina the following February, earning $15 (£10.90) an hour.

“You’re fixing the servers, which includes swapping out hard drives, swapping motherboards, lifting heavy batteries, they’re like 30lb (13.6kg) each,” she says. “It’s really difficult work.”

Google’s offices are famed for being creative, alternative and fun – with table tennis tables, free snacks and music rooms. However, what Shannon describes sounds less idyllic.

“People aren’t playing games all day like you see in the movies… the data centre is completely different,” she says.

Shannon was a contractor at Google. That means that although she worked in a Google data centre, she was actually employed by a subcontractor called Modis, part of a group of companies owned by another firm, Adecco.

That complex arrangement has become increasingly common at Google. About half of the people who work for the company are reportedly employed as contractors.

It also makes working out who actually carries the can for managerial mistakes complex. But we’ll get to that later.

Shannon says when the pandemic hit, the work got harder. The minimum number of jobs per shift increased. But there was a sweetener.

“Around the time of May 2020, Google announced that they were going to handle the pandemic in an honourable way. They said that they were going to give bonuses to every employee, including contractors, who work in person,” she says.

“The time came that we were supposed to get that bonus and it never appeared in any of our bank accounts. We started getting concerned like, you know, I really could use this extra money.”

It was around this point that she says employees started talking to each other about the bonus, and how much they were entitled to receive.

“We started asking each other about pay, but any time it came up in front of management we were told not to talk about it.”

Shannon says she was even sent a message by a manager saying: “It is never ok to discuss compensation with your peers”. She shared it with the BBC.

Shannon did eventually receive her bonus, but says she had become disillusioned. She had hoped to get a full-time job at Google. However, she noticed a culture of “perma-temps”, temporary staff who she says would never get made staff, no matter how much they tried.

Frustrated by management, Shannon reached what she says was her breaking point.

“It’s very hot in the data centres – about 85F (29.5C). So Google issued me a water bottle, but the cap on it broke.”

She says the same thing happened to her colleague, a full-time Google employee. However, Shannon says although her colleague was given a new bottle, she wasn’t. She went home and typed up a Facebook post.

Eventually, she says she had “had enough”.

“The next day, I was at work, I got called into a conference room with all, for the most, the managers present. And they told me that my Facebook post was in violation of the non-disclosure agreement, and that I was a security risk and needed to hand over my badge and my laptop immediately, and be escorted off site.”

The Alphabet Workers Union was set up in January 2021 for Google workers. It is not recognised by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent government agency, and is sometimes referred to as a “minority union”. The vast majority of Google workers aren’t members, but Shannon was and the union took up her case.

In February, they filed two cases on her behalf under unfair labour practice laws. One that she had been suspended illegally – for talking about supporting a union. The other that her managers had asked her, illegally, not to discuss her wages.

Last month Google, Modis and the Alphabet Workers Union reached a settlement.

Shannon’s suspension was overturned.Google signed a document saying its employees “have the right to discuss wage rates, bonuses, and working conditions”.

It was a victory for both Shannon and the newly-formed union.

“People who work in warehouses and data centres for these trillion dollar companies are tired of even their smallest rights being trampled on. And they’re realising that the companies aren’t listening to their workers. So we’re going to make them.”

Last week, Amazon workers in Alabama voted on whether they should unionise. Amazon is desperate to avoid workers unionising.

The result is expected soon. It’s the latest battle between Big Tech and some workers who feel, to put it mildly, unloved.

“I think that one of the biggest things that people can learn is that not all Google employees make six figures… and even on the lowest level at Google, they have so much power – so much more power than they realise,” said Shannon.

And as for Google?

Well it didn’t admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, and didn’t admit to being a “joint employer” of contract staff. The BBC put Shannon’s story to Google but it said it had nothing further to add. Adecco has not responded to a BBC request for comment.

Shannon doesn’t want to return to a Google data centre, and ultimately wants to do a PhD in history. But she has already contributed to the history books, a rare win by an employee against a tech giant.