Meta's employee mouse tracking program could reportedly violate EU privacy laws

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Reuters says Meta's mouse tracking program for employees could run afoul of the EU's strict privacy rules. If you'll recall, the news organization reported back in April that the company will be capturing its US employees' keystrokes, mouse movements and clicks for the purpose of training its artificial intelligence models. Meta confirmed the program to Engadget, with a spokesperson telling us that the company is "launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications" because it needs real examples of people completing everyday tasks on computers. Now, Reuters reports that the program may have a larger scope than what Meta had revealed and that it may capture non-US data in the process. 

The company has reportedly admitted in Q&A documents provided to employees that the tool called Model Capability Initiative (MCI) would capture the contents of emails or messages sent to or by its US personnel, no matter where the sender or recipient is from. "If a US-based colleague has the tool enabled while gchatting or emailing with someone outside the US, that activity would be captured," Meta wrote in the document.

Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold told Reuters that the company notified non-US employees that the tool was deployed on the computers of the US colleagues they may email or chat with. Arnold also said that that company "carefully considered and mitigated potential privacy risks in both the development and deployment" of the tool, and that it's "committed to complying with applicable laws and regulations." A legal expert told Reuters, however, that even a limited capture of EU employee data "could put Meta in violation of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules." Under the GDPR, companies must have a legal basis for collecting personal data and must disclose what it's collecting. 

Reuters also says in its new report that MCI tracks data from over 200 apps and websites for Meta's program. Employees have reportedly been complaining to the company that the tool was using so much data that those with monthly quota have been seeing theirs consumed in just a few days. That's just one of their complaints against MCI. Meta's employees have been voicing out their disapproval for the program since it was launched, with some expressing concerns that they were helping train their eventual replacements. Some employees even distributed flyers, asking colleagues to sign a petition protesting the program.