Credit Suisse is meticulously monitoring the professional behavior of its employees with the help of U.S. technology firm Palantir.
«I love our partnership with Palantir,» Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam said last fall. The Swiss bank, which is under pressure to fulfill a key anti-money laundering requirement by year-end, had stuck with the controversial U.S. firm even as rivals like J.P. Morgan cut ties.
However, Credit Suisse is not using Palantir to spy on employees, it said. «Palantir does not perform e-communication surveillance for Credit Suisse nor otherwise provide any related platform capabilities,» a spokesman for the bank said. This refutes a report in «Sonntagsblick» (in German) that Credit Suisse uses Palantir to scan staff emails to spot and root out potentially dangerous staff early on.
Dicey Territory
To be sure, Credit Suisse still monitors its staff's emails and messages for legal, regulatory, and business risks. «Where Credit Suisse does carry out such surveillance...this is in line with regulatory rules and expectations, is subject to stringent governance within Credit Suisse, and operates within the confines of applicable confidentiality and data privacy rules,» the spokesman said.
The spy scandal raises issues of privacy for Switzerland, which like Germany values data and personal privacy highly. It is relatively common for the alpine nation's finance industry to monitor employee communications. The Swiss data protection officer, Hugo Wyler, told the newspaper «They do this in order to fulfill compliance requirements».
Wyler acknowledged that the monitoring of staff is dicey: «When the sole purpose of an operation is to bolster performance or to control how loyal staff are, it may not exceed the level that is accepted in other industries.»
