True to its positioning as a defender of the privacy of internet users, Tim Cook, boss of Apple, said he was in favour of legislation on personal data in the United States. Mr. Cook spoke on Wednesday 24 October at the 40th international Conference of commissioners for data protection and privacy, , in Brussels, where his statement generated a round of applause.
Tim Cook believes that such a law should protect the right to have a minimum of data is collected and what data is collected and for what purposes. “This is the only way to give users the power to decide what collection is lawful and what collection is not. Less than that, it is a charade “, he said.
He also pointed out that companies should ” recognize that data belong to the user “, who retain the right to correct or delete it. Finally, “the right to security” of the data should also be recognized, according to him.
“An industrial complex of the given”
The CEO of Apple has also welcomed the european regulation of data protection (RGPD), which entered into force on 25 may, which aims to better protect, at the european level, personal data — in particular, to sanction companies which do not comply with the law to the tune of 4 % of their turnover.
the difference of companies like Facebook or Google, the business model of Apple is not based on the collection and commercial exploitation of personal data of its users. The group sells first of the devices and, increasingly, services (music streaming, online storage, etc.). Tim Cook rarely fails to recall.
The Apple boss said in his speech the existence of an ” industrial complex “, citing a “monitoring” and enterprise data collection which ” enrich “. “Our own information, those of all the days of the most intimate, is used as a weapon against us with a military efficiency, he denounced. These bits of data, which are harmless individually, are assembled with care, synthesized, traded and sold. “
Switch to spades with Mark Zuckerberg
After the scandal Cambridge Analytica, a british firm that specializes in political influence, which has drawn the data of tens of millions of users of Facebook — Tim Cook had already shown favour to a regulatory “well-thought” on the personal data.
It was in the wake criticized without naming Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook, ensuring that it could never be in the same type of scandal : “We take to heart the experience of our users and we will not play with your privacy. “Marz Zuckerberg had then defended his economic model, which is free and based on targeted advertising, saying wanting to” create a product that does not serve as the rich ” — a reference to barely-concealed devices expensive sold by Apple.
in The United States, a country that had shown up here is rather hostile to this type of regulation, the idea makes its way little by little. The case of Cambridge Analytica has reacted to citizens and political figures. The question of regulation is, moreover, appeared several times during the two passages of Mark Zuckerberg in the face of the u.s. Congress in April.
