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Apple's Cook addresses personal, tech privacy issues in speech
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Jun 3, 2015, 12:42 PM
 
Even as the Republican-dominated US Senate passed a measure attempting to restore some -- but not all -- of the government's bulk data-collection powers (which expired on Monday), Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated his role as America's leading corporate pro-privacy advocate by speaking via teleconferencing at an event hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, where he was honored as one of America's "Champions of Freedom."

Cook, as he has done elsewhere, railed against both data-collection programs by the government as well as some of his tech rivals, particularly Google and Facebook -- firms that generate nearly all of their income by collecting and selling profiles of users for targeted advertising. Consumers, he said, often fail to understand how much information about them is being monetized, and how deeply the data collection goes into their personal lives.

List of speakers and hosts at EPIC conference
List of speakers and hosts at EPIC conference


"I'm speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the most prominent and successful companies have built their businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about their personal information," Cook said in his address. "They're gobbling up everything they can learn about you, and trying to monetize it. We think that's wrong. And it's not the kind of company that Apple wants to be."

"Like many of you, we at Apple reject the idea that our customers should have to make tradeoffs between privacy and security," he said. "We can, and we must, provide both in equal measure. We believe that people have a fundamental right to privacy. The American people demand it, the Constitution demands it, morality demands it."

Cook took particular aim at the business model of both rivals, in which any revealed data is mined and sold to both advertisers and anyone else who wants it, regardless of their intent. So-called "free" services such as many of the ones Google offers, Cook said, come with a higher price than most users understand. One of the latest offerings from Google, its new Google Photos service, allows Google to identify people in the pictures, mine geotags for location information, collate related pictures from others to form conclusions about users, and use the photos for any purpose the company might choose, from promotion to selling the images to others.

"You might like these so-called free services, but we don't think they're worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for God knows what advertising purpose," Cook told the crowd. "And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is."



Cook noted that Apple, by comparison, does not sell data about its users to any other entity, claims no rights over what data it collects, and does not collect any data other than what is necessary to make software services work. Its business model, Cook said, simply doesn't rely on data-mining customer information and selling it, and so there is no need for the company to engage in those practices. For example, Apple Maps would need a user's location in order to give meaningful directions, but the program does not send Apple itself any data about where users are or go to, or sell that information to others -- unlike Google Maps.

Likewise, the company's voice assistant Siri requires access to Contacts in order to learn the names of people the user knows, but does not share that information with Apple. The program needs to understand that "John" refers to a specific friend or family member, but does not use that information to send contacts fake "endorsements" of products or services -- as Facebook and other social networks do.

As he has before, Cook strongly criticized a number of government initiatives to force software companies to abandon the encryption of personal data or to build in "back doors" that would make it easy for agencies to decrypt information once they opted to do so. Apple, which includes automatic encryption of iOS devices and is making OS X's Filevault technology a "recommended" option in new Mac sales, believes that if backdoors are built in for government use, they will be exploited and abused by corrupt agencies, and by nefarious outside attackers as well.

"Criminals are using every technology tool at their disposal to hack into people's accounts," he told the crowd. "If they know there's a key hidden somewhere, they won't stop until they find it."
     
climacs
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Jun 3, 2015, 12:48 PM
 
Fandroids would be only half as obnoxious as they are, if only they would at least acknowledge or understand the issues Cook raises here. FB and Google are not giving away their services for free due to altruism.
     
chimaera
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Jun 3, 2015, 01:26 PM
 
Cook has been impressing me repeatedly on privacy issues. Steve chose well.
     
climacs
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Jun 3, 2015, 02:22 PM
 
there's plenty of self-interest there, chimaera, but so what? It's a really important issue.
     
Charles Martin
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Jun 3, 2015, 03:16 PM
 
It is definitely a "market differentiator" from Google (and FB et al, which Apple doesn't really compete against), but I don't see this as a cynical ploy to use privacy as a sales tactic -- Cook talks about this issue a lot (along with social justice, equal rights, etc), but its not a factor in the company's advertising or marketing of the products/services -- at least not at this point. I think "old school" manufacturers like Microsoft (yes, MS) and Apple do not find the entire "free in exchange for every detail about you, right down to what you dream about" business model palpable.
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Grendelmon
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Jun 3, 2015, 03:17 PM
 
Yes, but how much data is Apple collecting about it's own users? They may not be "monetizing" from their customer information but that doesn't absolve them of big data sin from a privacy perspective.

www.apple.com/privacy/privacy-policy/

They collect just as much information as any other big tech. They just don't sell it. They profile you for iAds. They're watching where you go for crowd sourced traffic information. Etc, etc.
( Last edited by Grendelmon; Jun 3, 2015 at 04:01 PM. )
     
climacs
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Jun 3, 2015, 04:31 PM
 
I think you meant "palatable", Charles. "Palpable" means something that can be felt.
     
Charles Martin
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Jun 3, 2015, 04:51 PM
 
Gah. Thanks for pointing that out, climacs.

Grendelmon: I would suggest that there's a huge difference between the info Apple collects and how it uses it and the information Google collects and how it uses it. HUGE difference. Quantum order of magnitude of difference.
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DiabloConQueso
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Jun 4, 2015, 12:15 AM
 
I agree with Charles on this one with regard to Apple's data collection policies, specifically with regard to the fact that Apple states that personally-identifying information is not collected, most all the information they collect is specific to devices and not people, is only temporarily held or otherwise obfuscated so that it only identifies a unique device (but does not tie that device to any person), and that the information is never sold or shared with anyone outside of Apple, nor for any reason other than service improvement (e.g., better accuracy) or diagnostics.

Combined with Apple's push-back against the government in terms of backdoors and encryption with regard to law enforcement and counter-terrorism measures, it's a pretty bold collection of statements, and some that a great many people would have a vested interest in finding out whether Apple was lying about them or not. No one's found any lies concerning them yet.

No one's claiming that Apple is squeaky-clean, but they are absolutely head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to protecting their users' privacy and personal information in both policy and practice. In other words, they've been nothing but pretty darn honest and forthcoming with their user base about what they do and what they don't do.
     
just a poster
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Jun 4, 2015, 12:42 AM
 
Privacy is not a technology issue, it is an issue of culture, moral, and business (income) stakes. Tracking online is an arms race - one can choose to participate or not. Mr. Cook speaks a good game about privacy but Apple's track record on privacy is not exemplary.

Examples: requiring ID to purchase a phone
Spotlight web searches
Pinging servers for software updates

In today's world and political/business/marketing inter-connectedness between various ad publishers, tracking services and individual online content, marketing and email providers, a naked IP address can be a personably identifiable marker. Browser fingerprinting is an identifiable marker. DNS server logs are an identifiable marker and tracking mechanism. Cookies are yesterday.

What is necessary is written corporate commitment to refuse to divulge information about customers to other businesses and to government officials - absent a regular court warrant - alike.

Online, privacy is an absolute commodity: possessed completely or not at all. Especially when IP addresses are static and shared among the companies/websites our computers communicate with.
     
   
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