Google has plant itself at the center of considerable backlash once again , this time for place two employees on administrative leave for uncertain reasons , as well as forcontractingfamous union - busting house IRI . At a worker - top exchange Friday break of the day on the company ’s San Francisco campus , another revelation descend to light : the cell phone of one recently disciplined employee was allegedly rendered cryptically unusable .

“ Two hebdomad ago yesterday , I incur an email from my director distinguish me that I would have a coming together with the Global Investigations team , ” Rebecca Rivers , one of the two employees recently put on leave , tell this morning . “ At nearly the exact same prison term , my personal sound was either corrupted or wipe . Everything on my phone that was not backed up to the cloud is gone , let in four calendar month of my modulation timeline photos , and I will never get those back . ”

While river does not go so far as to explicitly arrogate that the incident is more than an unnerving coincidence , the logical implication seems to be that Google was behind the strange loss of data .

Googler Rebecca Rivers

Googler Rebecca RiversScreenshot: YouTube

Rivers and fellow colleague Laurence Berland were both open to interior investigations and field of study , according to an internal memo get earlier this week byCNBC ’s Jennifer Elias . According to Google , both hadviolatedcompany insurance , with the clean implication that they had been press sources . Both Rivers and Berland have denied leak out internal Google information to the press .

In his speech today , Berland also claims the Global Investigations squad were clear that he was not charge of leaking . or else , Rivers and Berland , as well as many of the society ’s activists , sense that party retaliation for anterior organizing efforts is the true source of these strange disciplinal measure . During his two - and - a - half hour meeting with Global Investigations , Berland said , “ they wanted me to identify my co - workers who are descend together to better our workplace — and I ’m pretty sure that ’s illegal . ”

Rivers , according to other Google worker , was involved in crafting amemourging the party to discerp ties with U.S. Customs and Border Protection , the agency brutally implementing the Trump organisation ’s nativist policy through deportations and detention cantonment . Berland was part of an attempt to have Googleremovedfrom the San Fransisco Pride Parade follow theugly battlebetween Vox diarist Carlos Maza and far - ripe talking point Steven Crowder which video subsidiary YouTube was exceptionally dull to count in on .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

fit in to Berland ’s speech at today ’s rally , while the news of IRI being lease on only go bad this week , Google executives have been play with members of the business firm since this outpouring . “ You do n’t charter consultants like that to help you decide if you ’re go to snap down on your employee . You hire adviser like that because you ’ve decided to crack down on your employee , ” Berland said today . “ alas for them , it is n’t working . ”

We ’ve reach out out to Google to remark on these new inside information and will update if we get wind back .

We ’ve corrected an earlier version which stated Berland and Rivers were accused of leaking . Though another engineer was give notice for that reason around the same clock time , Google has not affirmatively stated as much .

William Duplessie

Google

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