On 9 September 2026, during the 9th edition of INDL, held at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Teleperformance SE, one of the world’s largest providers of customer relationship management and outsourced digital services, was formally notified to undertake a comprehensive review of its vigilance plan, with the aim of strengthening the protection of the health, safety and integrity of its data workers. The formal legal action was initiated by T-FAPT, the CGT’s national federation representing workers in the postal and telecommunications sectors, together with the Data Labelers Association and The Oversight Lab Africa, two Kenyan organisations working to defend the rights and protection of data workers. The action follows several months of action-research conducted by the organisation Intérêt à Agir, coordinated by Luca D’Ambrosio and Baptiste Delmas, in partnership with DipLab. Their investigations have documented several serious concerns affecting Kenyan data workers, including the vulnerability of migrant workers, exposure to violent, disturbing and potentially traumatising content in the course of their work, and fear of retaliation, which can prevent workers from reporting abuses or effectively exercising their rights. Since 2017, the French Duty of Vigilance Law has required large French companies to establish and effectively implement a vigilance plan designed to identify and prevent serious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as risks to the health and safety of people, throughout their activities and relevant value chains. In the case of Teleperformance, the organisations bringing this action argue that the company’s current vigilance plan does not adequately identify or prevent the risks documented by the research conducted by DipLab and Intérêt à Agir among Kenyan data workers. The formal notice therefore calls on Teleperformance to strengthen its vigilance measures and address the risks identified across its global digital labour chain. The formal notice gives Teleperformance three months to comply with its obligations under the Duty of Vigilance Law.

Thomas Le Bonniec was invited to speak on the 23rd of June, to the “Fight for Us not for them” event, held in Brussels, by organizations opposing the deregulation push on digital rights and especially the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) His presentation drew on Cecilia Rikap’s theory of digital dependency to argue that four main flows of data and knowledge currently move from the EU to the US for AI training purposes. Le Bonniec and Rikap argues that the Digital Omnibus (a series of amendment to the RGPD aimed to weaken it’s regulatory constraint) is going to accelerate these flows, and backfire on any innovation and digital sovereignty goals that have been set by European Institutions. The LeakyLM project, directed by the IMDEA Networks Institute, revealed that there were hidden data transfers when using the interface of 4 of the most commonly used LLMs. An other projetc in wich Le Bonniec is currently working and whose results will be released after the summer, has studied the behiavour of one work platform for “AI training” and found no fewer than 16 trackers on it. These flows are actually feeding directly into the AI for military use sector, as the same clients of this platform are engaged with the US department of war. Through his presentation, Thomas Le Bonniec suggests a few answers to the question : So what is there to be done, as the digital omnibus will accelerate the demotion of the EU into a digital periphery from which data and knowledge are extracted? Specifically on his last slide, where he suggests recommendations to repel modifications on articles 4, 9, 12, 13, and 88, of the GDPR, and embedding into law at the very least the algorithmic justice principle. He also argues that consent should be the sole legal basis for using personal data for AI slide thomasDownload