Tag: sexual harassment

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AllVoices raises $3 million to build a platform for anonymous harassment and bias reporting

As the national conversation pushes companies to reexamine the HR processes suppressing sexual harassment and bias reporting, tech startups are looking to find a way to smooth out the process and encourage communication.

LA-based AllVoices is building an encrypted communications platform for offices that allows employees to anonymously send complaints to their human resources department that can then follow-up and track the cases in an easy-to-use dashboard. CEO Claire Schmidt tells TechCrunch that her company has just closed a $3 million seed round with funding from Crosscut, Greycroft, Halogen Ventures, Vitalize VC and others.

CEO Claire Schmidt

Schmidt, most recently a VP at 20th Century Fox, started AllVoices after finding inspiration in Susan Fowler’s Uber blog post to create a platform that allowed employees at companies to anonymously offer feedback and file reports about internal toxicity. Schmidt says existing processes used for reporting can leave victims of harassment hesitant to come forward and risk damaging their career paths.

“We’re using this really outdated process, we’re basically telling people, ‘Okay, just come in and tell someone in HR, and hope for the best.’,” Schmidt told TechCrunch in an interview. “And to me that seemed especially unfair to the most vulnerable people in any given work environment because they’re junior they don’t have as much job security — they’re viewed as more expendable.”

Employees at companies that use AllVoices can log into a mobile app and anonymously submit reports and receive text notifications when they’ve gotten a response from the company, a streamlined process that Schmidt hopes can encourage people to “report in real-time.” HR people don’t see names or any other identifying information and AllVoices doesn’t know the name of the employee either with all communications being encrypted.

“We do encrypt all of our data in storage, in backup, in transit, at rest — at every level,” Schmidt says.

Sixty days after a complaint is made, AllVoices sends a notification to the employee asking whether they were aware of any action being taken by the company and how satisfied they were with it. The startup then aggregates that data and provides it back to the company so they can get a clearer sense of their own responsiveness.

AllVoices isn’t the only startup tackling this issue, in 2018 we profiled Spot which is also building an anonymous reporting platform. AllVoices’ platform goes beyond streamlining processes for sexual harassment, the startup has modules for general feedback, ethics and compliance issues, culture problems, diversity and inclusion concerns and harassment and bias complaints.

The startup has also aimed to make a free version of its product so that employees at companies that haven’t integrated AllVoices can still make anonymous complaints by entering in an email for someone in their HR department. Schmidt hopes that the free service will serve their broader mission and help them onboard new customers.

AllVoices says they now have nearly 50 companies using the platform, including Instacart, GoPro, Wieden+Kennedy, The Wing, and FabFitFun.

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Transforming #MeToo into the industry’s first investor clause

Elizabeth Gore Contributor
Elizabeth Gore is co-founder and president of Alice, a free multi-channel platform powered by AI technology that guides business owners by providing access to funding, networks and services.
More posts by this contributor

“Keep your head high and give them hell.”

My grandma, Opal Thompson, once wrote that to me in a letter, like the dyed-in-the-wool, strong Texan woman she was. It is now tattooed on my forearm for all to see. Memories of her powerful presence and great advice have been a North Star on my path to entrepreneurship, as well as the kick in the pants I have needed along the way to confidently go toe-to-toe with nonbelievers in my industry. “Honey, you need to work harder and smarter than men and get ‘er done,” she once told me. It may sound folksy, but it’s gotten me to where I am today.

Last October, my fearless cofounder Carolyn Rodz and I “gave them hell” with an announcement of which I couldn’t be prouder: our small business growth platform Alice just closed a Series A round of funding. That’s a major accomplishment that I think is newsworthy in its own right. But, the headline is even better. We required a morality clause in the funding agreement, legally demanding repercussions in the event of racial, gender, or sexual orientation discrimination.

As we were pitching Alice for funding, Carolyn and I went back to the fundamentals of why we started Alice for small business owners in the first place. Our platform exists to break down barriers to growth for our community of more than 100,000 business owners — especially entrepreneurs who are women, veterans, people of color, or members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Whether that means access to tips and best practices or funding opportunities of which they otherwise wouldn’t be aware, our job is to help small business owners “get ‘er done” — whatever that means to them. For us, there is an immense responsibility in being a comprehensive resource that small business owners trust to help them grow their ventures. We’re always encouraging our owners to try new approaches and go big in every aspect of their development, and that includes pushing owners to challenge institutions that stand in the way of their successes.

One institution that has long stood in our way is the silent perpetuation of discriminatory and predatory behavior by influential investors. While we’ve seen a rise of so-called “Weinstein” clauses drafted in the wake of the watershed #MeToo movement two years ago, most of those cases refer to protections for investors against investee executives who have outstanding allegations.

This is an important step in the right direction of instilling accountability at all levels of business. But we were left asking ourselves, “what happens when an investor is the one #MeToo’d?”

We at Alice were troubled by the lack of legal consequences for key decision makers, from board members to venture capitalists, given the reputational harm their actions could inflict on the businesses they touch. So to protect the reputation we have worked so hard to build for Alice and to protect the business owners who seek us for help every day from across the globe, Carolyn and I decided to lead by example and take a stand with our own investors. We took the “Weinstein” clause and flipped it, giving our board members the agency to use corporate governance mechanisms to vote for removal of any board member in the event of a #MeToo event, racial discrimination, or sexual orientation discrimination incident. Simply put, Alice and its investors are not afraid to show you the door if your behavior doesn’t serve the best interests of our community of entrepreneurs.

Including this provision was crucial to our vision for the company as we continue to grow. It echoes our core values of inclusivity within our online business community. And, as our users seek venture capital, we want them to know that they have the right to stipulate what should be common sense legal protections while still securing the funding they need. We have provided the clause openly here so everyone can take advantage — and not have to pay the legal bills we did.

Making sure that this information is available to anyone who wants it is part of our commitment to ensuring that everyone in business gets a fair shake. To have other founders include morality clauses like ours in their funding agreements is as important to me as the fact that we did it ourselves. We must make this a trend.

Our morality clause is also important to us as we strive to improve the broader business community and the way we all seek funding. Small businesses represent nearly 95 percent of all U.S. employers and support the careers of more than 50 percent of Americans.

But, while the small business landscape is changing into a New Majority, with more women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ folks starting businesses every day, the demographic of venture capitalists is much slower to change. To date, 89 percent of venture capital deciders are still men, and of all the investments they make, only 2 percent of them are in female-owned businesses. Less than half of a percent of women who receive venture capital are Latina, and the representation is even worse for other minority communities of entrepreneurs.

By now, Carolyn (who is Latina herself) and I have learned that we have to make our presence known in a business world that has often excluded us. And as more #MeToo behaviors come to light across industries, we’ll be able to protect our businesses and entrepreneurs making lasting impacts on our communities.

As we look to the next chapter of Alice and its expansion into new markets in 2020, we will continue to share our unique funding story with hopes that other small businesses will be inspired and empowered to do the same.

Venture capitalists be warned: the New Majority of entrepreneurs is here to stay, and our morality clause is just the beginning of a new path to small business success.

I think Grandma Opal would be proud.

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Uber agrees to pay $4.4 million to settle EEOC sexual harassment and retaliation charge

Uber has agreed to pay a $4.4 million fine to settle a 2017 charge from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission pertaining to sex discrimination and retaliation.

The investigation found reasonable cause to believe that Uber “permitted a culture of sexual harassment and retaliation against individuals who complained about such harassment,” the EEOC wrote in a press release today. The EEOC launched the investigation following reports pertaining to Uber’s workplace while under the leadership of then CEO Travis Kalanick.

“We’ve worked hard to ensure that all employees can thrive at Uber by putting fairness and accountability at the heart of who we are and what we do,” Uber Chief Legal Officer Tony West said in a statement. “I am extremely pleased that we were able to work jointly with the EEOC in continuing to strengthen these efforts.”

As part of the settlement, Uber will divvy up the $4.4 million to anyone who the EEOC determines experiences sexual harassment and/or retaliation at Uber after Jan. 1, 2014. Uber has also agreed to establish a system to identify employees who have been the subject of more than one harassment complaint, as well as identify managers who have not responded to sexual harassment concerns in a timely manner.

For the next three years, Uber will also face monitoring by former EEOC Commissioner Fred Alvarez.

“This agreement holds Uber accountable, and, going forward, positions the company to innovate and transform the tech industry by modeling effective measures against sexual harassment and retaliation,” EEOC Commissioner Victoria Lipnic said in a statement.

Now, a claims administrator will send notices to every female employee who worked at Uber at any point between Jan. 1, 2014 and June 30, 2019. If that’s you, you’ll be able to respond to that notice to make your claim. The EEOC will then determine if they are eligible for monetary relief.

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UK law review eyes abusive trends like deepfaked porn and cyber flashing

The UK government has announced the next phase of a review of the law around the making and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, with ministers saying they want to ensure it keeps pace with evolving digital tech trends.

The review is being initiated in response to concerns that abusive and offensive communications are on the rise, as a result of it becoming easier to create and distribute sexual images of people online without their permission.

Among the issues the Law Commission will consider are so-called ‘revenge porn’, where intimate images of a person are shared without their consent; deepfaked porn, which refers to superimposing a real photograph of a person’s face onto a pornographic image or video without their consent; and cyber flashing, the unpleasant practice of sending unsolicited sexual images to a person’s phone by exploiting technologies such as Bluetooth that allow for proximity-based file sharing.

On the latter practice, the screengrab below is of one of two unsolicited messages I received as pop-ups on my phone in the space of a few seconds while waiting at a UK airport gate — and before I’d had a chance to locate the iOS master setting that actually nixes Bluetooth.

On iOS, even without accepting the AirDrop the cyberflasher is still able to send an unsolicited placeholder image with their request.

Safe to say, this example is at the tamer end of what tends to be involved. More often it’s actual dick pics fired at people’s phones, not a parrot-friendly silicone substitute…

cyber flashing

A patchwork of UK laws already covers at least some of the offensive and abusive communications in question, such as the offence of voyeurism under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which criminalises certain non-consensual photography taken for sexual gratification — and carries a two-year maximum prison sentence (with the possibility that a perpetrator may be required to be listed on the sexual offender register); while revenge porn was made a criminal offence under section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

But the government says that while it feels the law in this area is “robust”, it is keen not to be seen as complacent — hence continuing to keep it under review.

It will also hold a public consultation to help assess whether changes in the law are required.

The Law Commission published Phase 1 of their review of Abusive and Offensive Online Communications on November 1 last year — a scoping report setting out the current criminal law which applies.

The second phase, announced today, will consider the non-consensual taking and sharing of intimate images specifically — and look at possible recommendations for reform. Though it will not report for two years so any changes to the law are likely to take several years to make it onto the statute books.

Among specific issues the Law Commission will consider is whether anonymity should automatically be granted to victims of revenge porn.

Commenting in a statement, justice minister Paul Maynard said: “No one should have to suffer the immense distress of having intimate images taken or shared without consent. We are acting to make sure our laws keep pace with emerging technology and trends in these disturbing and humiliating crimes.”

Maynard added that the review builds on recent changes to toughen UK laws around revenge porn and to outlaw ‘upskirting’ in English law; aka the degrading practice of taking intimate photographs of others without consent.

“Too many young people are falling victim to co-ordinated abuse online or the trauma of having their private sexual images shared. That’s not the online world I want our children to grow up in,” added the secretary of state for digital issues, Jeremy Wright, in another supporting statement.

“We’ve already set out world-leading plans to put a new duty of care on online platforms towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator with teeth. This Review will ensure that the current law is fit for purpose as we deliver our commitment to make the UK the safest place to be online.”

The Law Commission review will begin on July 1, 2019 and report back to the government in summer 2021.

Terms of Reference will be published on the Law Commission’s website in due course.

Posted on

UK law review eyes abusive trends like deepfaked porn and cyber flashing

The UK government has announced the next phase of a review of the law around the making and sharing of non-consensual intimate images, with ministers saying they want to ensure it keeps pace with evolving digital tech trends.

The review is being initiated in response to concerns that abusive and offensive communications are on the rise, as a result of it becoming easier to create and distribute sexual images of people online without their permission.

Among the issues the Law Commission will consider are so-called ‘revenge porn’, where intimate images of a person are shared without their consent; deepfaked porn, which refers to superimposing a real photograph of a person’s face onto a pornographic image or video without their consent; and cyber flashing, the unpleasant practice of sending unsolicited sexual images to a person’s phone by exploiting technologies such as Bluetooth that allow for proximity-based file sharing.

On the latter practice, the screengrab below is of one of two unsolicited messages I received as pop-ups on my phone in the space of a few seconds while waiting at a UK airport gate — and before I’d had a chance to locate the iOS master setting that actually nixes Bluetooth.

On iOS, even without accepting the AirDrop the cyberflasher is still able to send an unsolicited placeholder image with their request.

Safe to say, this example is at the tamer end of what tends to be involved. More often it’s actual dick pics fired at people’s phones, not a parrot-friendly silicone substitute…

cyber flashing

A patchwork of UK laws already covers at least some of the offensive and abusive communications in question, such as the offence of voyeurism under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which criminalises certain non-consensual photography taken for sexual gratification — and carries a two-year maximum prison sentence (with the possibility that a perpetrator may be required to be listed on the sexual offender register); while revenge porn was made a criminal offence under section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015.

But the government says that while it feels the law in this area is “robust”, it is keen not to be seen as complacent — hence continuing to keep it under review.

It will also hold a public consultation to help assess whether changes in the law are required.

The Law Commission published Phase 1 of their review of Abusive and Offensive Online Communications on November 1 last year — a scoping report setting out the current criminal law which applies.

The second phase, announced today, will consider the non-consensual taking and sharing of intimate images specifically — and look at possible recommendations for reform. Though it will not report for two years so any changes to the law are likely to take several years to make it onto the statute books.

Among specific issues the Law Commission will consider is whether anonymity should automatically be granted to victims of revenge porn.

Commenting in a statement, justice minister Paul Maynard said: “No one should have to suffer the immense distress of having intimate images taken or shared without consent. We are acting to make sure our laws keep pace with emerging technology and trends in these disturbing and humiliating crimes.”

Maynard added that the review builds on recent changes to toughen UK laws around revenge porn and to outlaw ‘upskirting’ in English law; aka the degrading practice of taking intimate photographs of others without consent.

“Too many young people are falling victim to co-ordinated abuse online or the trauma of having their private sexual images shared. That’s not the online world I want our children to grow up in,” added the secretary of state for digital issues, Jeremy Wright, in another supporting statement.

“We’ve already set out world-leading plans to put a new duty of care on online platforms towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator with teeth. This Review will ensure that the current law is fit for purpose as we deliver our commitment to make the UK the safest place to be online.”

The Law Commission review will begin on July 1, 2019 and report back to the government in summer 2021.

Terms of Reference will be published on the Law Commission’s website in due course.

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Can Product Managers Save “American Idol”?

Can American Idol be brought back from the dead?
Can American Idol be brought back from the dead?
Image Credit: alogou1775

So who among us has not heard about the famous TV show “American Idol”? This is the show where anyone can try out to be on the show and the best singers are then selected to compete in a multi-week competition in which one of them will eventually be crowned the “American Idol” and potentially get a lucrative recording contract. This show used to be very popular, then it fell out of popularity and eventually ended up getting canceled. However, now another network is thinking about bringing it back. Can their product managers change its product development definition and bring a once popular TV show back from the dead?

What Happened To American Idol?

Let’s make sure that we all understand the history of American Idol. American Idol ran for 15 seasons on the Fox television network. It started out as a big money maker for the network and it ended up as a money loser in its final season. It succumbed to both declining ratings and rising costs. Two years ago, the Fox network declared American Idol dead and presented a big “final” season. However, now the ABC television network is betting that its product managers have the skills that will be needed in order to bring this television show back to life. What is this going to end up looking like on their product manager resume?

One of the differences between the ABC version of the show and the Fox version of the show is that ABC is showing that it is willing to spend significantly more on its judging panel than Fox did in its final seasons. So why is ABC willing to relaunch the American Idol show? Television broadcasters are losing viewers to both cable and streaming services. Coming up with hit shows is very hard to do. What this means is the more and more often the television broadcasters are choosing to go with known quantities – rebooting shows that have been canceled. What is basically happening is the networks are willing to try anything in order to determine if it will attract viewers. ABC believes that the American Idol franchise still has the ability to draw what they want the most – an audience.

When the product managers at ABC first started to think about bringing American Idol back, a number of people wondered if perhaps it was too soon to be talking about doing this. The Fox network had spent US$25M promoting the final season of American Idol as just exactly that – the final season. Fox network thought that it would be seen as fraudulent if the show was brought back so soon after having gone away. The ABC product managers are not so concerned about this because they believe that American Idol has broad appeal. The thinking is that American Idol is a form of storytelling that comes across as being both optimistic (I think that I’m going to win) and joyful (I won!). The ABC product managers hope that viewers will want to watch the new American Idol as a family. When it was on, American Idol was very popular. It attracted 20M viewers in 9 of its 15 seasons. Eventually its viewership dropped to under 10M and the show became very expensive to produce and lost $60M in its last two seasons.

How Can American Idol Be Brought Back?

The ABC product managers are going to have to be careful and make sure that they are able to keep production costs under control. In the previous version of the show, the salaries of the judges was one of the main reasons that the show lost so much money in the final two seasons. At it’s peak, Fox had been able to sell 30 second commercials on American Idol for $500,000. When they were able to do this, paying judge Simon Cowell $30M per season was easy to do. However, by the time that the show had lost half of its viewers during the shows last five years, ad revenue started to go down and all of sudden the salaries of the judges became a big deal. The ABC product managers are going all in when it comes to their judges. It is estimated that their costs for judges will be 60% higher than Fox’s was overall.

The ABC product managers think that they know what they are doing. They understand that they have made substantial investments in the talent of the judges for their version of this show. There are some issues that the ABC product managers may end up having to deal with. The talent that they plan on using to manage the flow of each episode is Brian Seacrest. However, he is currently dealing with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Mr. Seacrest has denied the allegations and an investigation by the NBC broadcaster where the incident took place revealed not enough evidence to support the allegation. ABC has decided to stand behind Mr. Seacrest.

The ABC product managers understand that determining if their new American Idol show is a success will be difficult to do. They are going to have to take into account more than just the show’s ratings and how much it costs to produce. One thing that is easy to overlook is that the American Idol show is going to end up occupying a great deal of ABC’s prime time schedule. What this means is that ABC is not going to have to develop or market new shows to fill these time slots. What this means for the ABC product managers is that the costs associated with creating their new American Idol show all of a sudden become a lot easier for the company to absorb. Ultimately its going to come down to whether or not ABC is going to be able to sell commercials on their new version of American Idol. Right now things are looking very good – ABC is reporting that they have already been able to sell 75% of American Idol’s commercial time.

What All Of This Means For You

In its heyday, the television show American Idol was very, very popular. However, after 15 seasons it become just too expensive to continue to produce and the Fox television network ended up canceling it. Now the product managers at ABC have taken a look at their product manager job description and are planning on bringing the show back. Is this going to be a good idea?

American Idol aired on the Fox television network for 15 seasons. During its last two seasons, it lost money for the Fox network. Fox heavily promoted the final season of American Idol as the last season ever. Now the product managers at ABC are planning on bringing it back. ABC is willing to relaunch American Idol because coming up with new shows is hard and risky work. American Idol already has a fan base that ABC thinks that it can appeal to. The ABC product managers see American Idol as a form of story telling that has happy endings. They think that families will be willing to watch this show. One of the things that brought down the first version of the show was how much the judges were being paid. ABC is planning on paying their judges even more. Despite currently fighting some sexual harassment lawsuits, Brian Seacrest is going to be the host of the new American Idol show. One advantage of adding this show to their playlist is that it will take up a lot of ABC’s broadcast time and that will eliminate the need to create and market additional programs.

The ABC product managers are taking a bit risk. They are planning on bringing back a television show that had been canceled because of poor ratings. They think that they can create a new show that everyone will want to watch. Anything is possible and I believe that a lot of people still have a positive impression of the show. We’ll have to watch carefully and see if the ABC product managers can pull this off!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

Question For You: What should the ABC product managers do differently with their version of American Idol in order to attract more viewers?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So for just a moment, picture yourself as a product manager for one of the most iconic products out there: Coke-Cola. You’ve done a great job – Coke is one of the most popular drinks available and no matter what country you go to, it is very well known. The company makes an enormous amount of money from your soft drink product every year and in all honesty, traditionally you’ve only had one real competitor – Pepsi. However, in the past few years, things have started to become a bit more challenging for you. More and more of your customers are staring to reject the sugary beverage that you are offering them and instead they are choosing to drink water and sports drinks. What’s a product manager to do?

The post Can Product Managers Save “American Idol”? appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

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On the Internet of Women with Moira Weigel

“Feminism,” the writer and editor Marie Shear famously said in an often-misattributed quote, “is the radical notion that women are people.” The genius of this line, of course, is that it appears to be entirely non-controversial, which reminds us all the more effectively of the past century of fierce debates surrounding women’s equality.

And what about in tech ethics? It would seem equally non-controversial that ethical tech is supposed to be good for “people,” but is the broader tech world and its culture good for the majority of humans who happen to be women? And to the extent it isn’t, what does that say about any of us, and about all of our technology?

I’ve known, since I began planning this TechCrunch series exploring the ethics of tech, that it would need to thoroughly cover issues of gender. Because as we enter an age of AI, with machines learning to be ever more like us, what could be more critical than addressing the issues of sex and sexism often at the heart of the hardest conflicts in human history thus far?

Meanwhile, several months before I began envisioning this series I stumbled across the fourth issue of a new magazine called Logic, a journal on technology, ethics, and culture. Logic publishes primarily on paper — yes, the actual, physical stuff, and a satisfyingly meaty stock of it, at that.

In it, I found a brief essay, “The Internet of Women,” that is a must-read, an instant classic in tech ethics. The piece is by Moira Weigel, one of Logic’s founders and currently a member of Harvard University’s “Society of Fellows” — one of the world’s most elite societies of young academics.

A fast-talking 30-something Brooklynite with a Ph.D. from Yale, Weigel’s work combines her interest in sex, gender, and feminism, with a critical and witty analysis of our technology culture.

In this first of a two-part interview, I speak with Moira in depth about some of the issues she covers in her essay and beyond: #MeToo; the internet as a “feminizing” influence on culture; digital media ethics around sexism; and women in political and tech leadership.

Greg E.: How would you summarize the piece in a sentence or so?

Moira W.: It’s an idiosyncratic piece with a couple of different layers. But if I had to summarize it in just a sentence or two I’d say that it’s taking a closer look at the role that platforms like Facebook and Twitter have played in the so-called “#MeToo moment.”

In late 2017 and early 2018, I became interested in the tensions that the moment was exposing between digital media and so-called “legacy media” — print newspapers and magazines like The New York Times and Harper’s and The Atlantic. Digital media were making it possible to see structural sexism in new ways, and for voices and stories to be heard that would have gotten buried, previously.

A lot of the conversation unfolding in legacy media seemed to concern who was allowed to say what where. For me, this subtext was important: The #MeToo moment was not just about the sexualized abuse of power but also about who had authority to talk about what in public — or the semi-public spaces of the Internet.

At the same time, it seemed to me that the ongoing collapse of print media as an industry, and really what people sometimes call the “feminization” of work in general, was an important part of the context.

When people talk about jobs getting “feminized” they can mean many things — jobs becoming lower paid, lower status, flexible or precarious, demanding more emotional management and the cultivation of an “image,” blurring the boundary between “work” and “life.”

The increasing instability or insecurity of media workplaces only make women more vulnerable to the kinds of sexualized abuses of power the #MeToo hashtag was being used to talk about.

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Google paid $105 million to two executives accused of sexual harassment

Google paid a total of $105 million to Andy Rubin and Amit Singhal after they were accused of sexual harassment at the company, the Wall Street Journal first reported. This confirms the New York Times report that Google paid $90 million to Rubin and reveals Google also paid $15 million to Singhal, who left Uber after it was revealed that he did not disclose the sexual harassment allegation.

The suit, filed by shareholder James Martin, confirms the board of directors approved a $90 million exit package for Rubin “as a goodbye present to him. No mention, of course, was made about the true reason for Rubin’s ‘resignation’ — his egregious sexual harassment while at Google.”

The suit goes on to describe how Singhal “was allowed to quietly resign at Google in 2016 in the wake of credible allegations of sexual harassment, and was paid millions in severance.”

In since unsealed documents, citing documents provided by Google, the suit reveals Google agreed to pay $45 million to Singhal, but ended up paying just $15 million since he went to work for a competitor. Google initially agreed to pay Singhal annual cash payments of $15 million, to be paid 12 months and then 24 months after his exit. Google offered an additional maximum of $15 million to be paid 36 months after his exit, contingent upon him not joining a competitor.

“Because Google’s Board concealed the reasons for Singhal’s departure, he found another lucrative job,” the suit states.

Singhal was a senior vice president of search before he resigned from Google in Feb. 2016. At the time, Singhal framed his resignation as a retirement, but the retirement lasted less than a year — Singhal joined Uber in January 2017 January. A month later, then Uber-CEO Travis Kalanick asked Singhal to resign after discovering Singhal did not disclose the sexual harassment investigation at Google. In an email to Bloomberg, Singhal wrote, “harassment is unacceptable in any setting” and that he wants “everyone to know that I do not condone and have not committed such behavior. In my 20-year career, I’ve never been accused of anything like this before, and the decision to leave Google was my own.”

In November 2018, Google said 48 people have been terminated for sexual harassment, including 13 who were senior managers and above. At the time, Google said none of those individuals had received an exit package. In a statement to TechCrunch today, a Google spokesperson said:

There are serious consequences for anyone who behaves inappropriately at Google. In recent years, we’ve made many changes to our workplace and taken an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority.”

The case is 19CV343672 | Martin v. Page, et al. (Alphabet Inc., located in the Superior Court of Santa Clara. Scribd is processing the file now. It’ll appear below once it’s ready.

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The UK now has a law against upskirting

A law change that comes into force in the UK today makes the highly intrusive practice of ‘upskirting’ illegal.

The government said it wants the new law to send a clear message that such behaviour is criminal and will not be tolerated.

Perpetrators in England and Wales face up to two years in prison under the new law if they’re convicted of taking a photograph or video underneath a person’s clothes for the purpose of viewing their underwear or genitals/buttocks without their knowledge or consent for sexual gratification or to cause humiliation, distress or alarm. (Scotland, home of the traditional male clothing item known as the kilt, has had a law against upskirting since 2010.)

There have been prosecutions for upskirting in England and Wales under an existing common law offence of outraging public decency. But following a campaign started by an upskirting victim the government decided to legislate to plug gaps in the law to make it a sexual offence.

The Voyeurism (Offences) (No. 2) Bill was introduced on June 21 last year and gains royal assent today.

Where the offence of upskirting is committed in order to obtain sexual gratification it can result in the most serious offenders being placed on the sex offenders register.

Under the new law victims are also entitled to automatic protection, such as from being identified in the media.

While the UK government is intending the law change to send a clear message that upskirting is socially unacceptable, there’s no doubt that legislation alone can’t do that. Robust enforcement is essential to counter any problematic attitudes that might be contributing to encourage antisocial uses of technologies in the first place.

For example, in South Korea a law against upskirting carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison yet the legislation has failed to curb an epidemic of offences fuelled by cheap access to tiny hidden spy cameras and baked in societal sexism — the latter seemingly also influencing how police choose to uphold the law, with campaigners complaining most perpetrators get off with small fines.

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Shareholder suit alleges Google covered up its sexual harassment problems with big payouts

Months after an earth-shattering New York Times investigation exposed Google parent company Alphabet’s $90 million payout to Android co-founder Andy Rubin, despite the accusations of sexual misconduct made against him, a Google shareholder is suing the company.

James Martin filed suit in the San Mateo Superior Court Thursday morning, alleging the company’s leaders deployed massive allowances to poor-behaving executives to cover up harassment scandals. Both Rubin and Google’s former head of search Amit Singhal, who peacefully left the company in 2016 amid harassment allegations that weren’t made public until the following year, are listed as defendants in the court filing. This is because the plaintiff is seeking a full return of the massive payouts awarded to the embattled former execs.

With charges including breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, abuse of power and corporate waste, per The Washington Post, the lawsuit asks for an end of nondisclosure and arbitration agreements at Google, which ensure workplace disputes are settled behind closed doors and without any right to an appeal. Martin is also requesting Google incorporate three new directors to the Alphabet board and put an end to supervoting shares, which gives certain shareholders more voting control.

The lawsuit also targets Rubin, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, chief executive officer Sundar Pichai and executive chairman Eric Schmidt. Former human resources director Laszlo Bock, chief legal officer David Drummond and former executive Amit Singhal are also named, as are long-time venture capitalists and Google board members John Doerr and Ram Shriram.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Following the release of the NYT report, Googlers across the world rallied to protest the company’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations. The protestors had five key asks, including an end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination, a commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity and a clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously. Google ultimately complied with employees and put an end to forced arbitration; other tech companies, such as Airbnb, followed suit.

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