““Deeply personal” data is being “weaponised against us with military efficiency” by tech companies, Apple’s chief executive warned today as he called for tough GDPR-style data laws in the US.
Speaking at a privacy conference in Brussels, Tim Cook made a thinly veiled attack on rival companies such as Google and Facebook, which he referred to as “data-industrial complex” that magnified our worst human tendencies.
“We shouldn’t sugar-coat the consequences,” he said. “This is surveillance.”
Referring obliquely to scandals such as the leak of millions of Facebook users’ data to Cambridge Analytica, the disgraced British firm, he called for the United States to bring in privacy laws following the example of Europe’s general data protection regulation (GDPR). This requires “transparency” and “fairness” in data-collection and sharing and carries fines of up to 4 per cent of global turnover for breaches.
Mr Cook, 57, said: “It is time for the rest of the world . . . to follow your lead. We at Apple are in full support of a comprehensive federal privacy law in the United States.”
He outlined four fundamental rights protected by the general data protection regulation that should also be protected by US legislation: the rights to have personal data minimised; for users to know what data is collected; the right to access such data; and the right for that data to be kept securely.
Mr Cook also made reference to Russian use of misinformation on social media to interfere in US and other electoral processes, and the spread of hate speech online that has incited killings in countries including India and Burma.
He said: “Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies . . . Rogue actors and even governments have taken advantage of user trust to deepen divisions, incite violence, and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false. This crisis is real. It is not imagined, or exaggerated, or crazy.”
Direct calls for tech regulation are unusual in the US, which has favoured a laissez-faire approach. Mr Cook has criticised rival companies and sought to stress Apple’s commitment to protecting user privacy as a series of scandals have drawn criticism of the wider tech sector. Asked to comment on the position of Facebook’s co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year, he said he “wouldn’t be” in the 34-year-old’s situation. Mr Zuckerberg said that the remark was “extremely glib”.
Mr Cook’s comments at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners nevertheless represent his most scathing critique of other Silicon Valley firms to date.”
0 Comments