Meta Pauses Employee-Tracking Program After Internal Data Leak

Meta has paused a divisive employee monitoring program after an internal security issue exposed data collected through the initiative to other workers inside the company. The Model Compatibility Initiative (MCI) had been running since April for employees in the United States.

What the tool collected

According to workers who have been campaigning against it, MCI "collects computer inputs such as mouse movements, click locations and keystrokes, as well as screen content". When it launched, employees could not opt out; after protests over privacy, security and personal liberty, that changed to a limited degree.

Executives have repeatedly defended the project, saying it was needed to train AI systems to operate computer software the way humans do, and that employees are the best examples for that training.

The security lapse

On Monday, a Meta engineer issued an internal security notice saying that databases filled with information gathered by MCI had been exposed to anyone inside the company. In a note to staff late that day, Stephane Kasriel, a Meta vice president overseeing AI research, said the issue had been discovered on 18 June and addressed within four hours — but the first fix did not hold and access to the data had to be locked down further. He said "some MCI-derived data" had been reachable by more people than intended, without giving details.

"We will only re-enable MCI when we are confident in the effectiveness of our data protection controls," Kasriel wrote, adding that the company would say more about the tool's future because it had now "gathered sufficient data to assess the long-term value" of it.

Employees' reaction

A spokesperson, Tracy Clayton, said Meta had "no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees" and that the program was being paused while the company investigates. A former employee involved in the pushback called the lapse "a mess" that staff had expected, and said leadership had "failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about the safety and privacy of worker and customer data".

After critical comments flooded internal forums on Monday, Meta told WIRED about the pause several hours before announcing it to employees. Some workers said they were confused because the tool kept running on their laptops in the meantime.