WARNING SHOT
Apple: Privacy in peril
The war of words over online privacy is ramping up between the tech giants.
Apple boss Tim Cook warned on Wednesday that user data is being “weaponized with military efficiency” by Silicon Valley companies and advertisers, and called for a federal privacy law in the US.
“Every day, billions of dollars change hands, and countless decisions are made, on the basis of our likes and dislikes, our friends and families,” Cook told a conference in Brussels. “These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded and sold.”
Cook didn’t mention names, but it was clear he was talking about Facebook and Google, whose respective chief executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, beamed in through internet video to speak to the data-privacy conference Wednesday.
Zuckerberg — who has previously blasted Cook’s concerns as grandstanding from a company that is just "serving rich people” with its pricey iPhones — renewed his defense of Facebook’s data-hungry business tactics.
“Instead of charging people, we charge advertisers to show ads,” Zuckerberg said. “People consistently tell us that they want a free service and that if they [are] going to see ads to get it, then they want those ads to be relevant.”
Nevertheless, Facebook recently fell victim to a hack that saw the private information of 30 million users leaked. The social-networking giant is now investing heavily in both security and privacy even as such measures crimp its profitability, Zuckerberg said.
Google CEO Pichai — who, it was revealed earlier this month, was part of a cover-up of a data breach at the search giant’s Google+ social network — also mouthed positive sentiments about privacy, saying Google is taking measures to allow users more control over their data.
“User trust is the foundation for everything we do,” Pichai said. “Privacy and security are fundamental tenets of that.”
Cook countered that tech companies “shouldn’t sugarcoat the consequences of gathering user data.
“This is surveillance,” Cook said. “And these stockpiles of personal data serve only to enrich the companies that collect them.”
Cook took his first jab at Facebook in March during the height of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which saw Facebook leak the private information of 87 million users.